


Someone, Somewhere

by wigglebox



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War II, Anxiety, Aphasia, Consensual Somnophilia, Depression, Dirty Pictures, Dirty Talk, Disability, Drunk Sex, Emotional Manipulation, Hate Crimes, Homophobia, Infidelity, Internalized Homophobia, John Winchester Being an Asshole, Love Letters, M/M, Memory Loss, Mutual Pining, New York City, Night Terrors, Period-Typical Racism, Physical Abuse, Public Sex, Slurs, Suicidal Thoughts, Unprotected Sex, Verbal Abuse, deancaspinefest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-03
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:41:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 64,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23987542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wigglebox/pseuds/wigglebox
Summary: When Cas is plucked from his and Dean's comfy life in New York to serve his country, their relationship gets put to the test. Trying over the course of the year to keep their love strong through letter-writing, things hit a breaking point when Allied forces launch the largest seaborne invasion in history. The letters soon become a roadmap in rediscovering themselves and each other.
Relationships: Benny Lafitte & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester, minor Dean/Lee
Comments: 60
Kudos: 95
Collections: Dean/Cas Pinefest 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**CHAPTER ONE**

**June 7th, 1944**

**Pomona, Kansas**

Dean Winchester thinks he's doing well.

He woke up (not like he really slept to begin with) washed, brushed his teeth, and still managed to make him and his father breakfast before the sun fully rose. They ate in silence, as usual, with John focused on the paper from two days ago. But his father still ate everything on his plate, and Dean took that as a good sign. He'd take anything as a good sign at this point.

Morning chores gave him a mindless activity to distract himself with. Dean swept the floors upstairs, scrubbed the tub, washed their shirts, and hung them out to dry in the late-morning sun. He also beat the rugs and blankets outside, and that was more cathartic than he anticipated.

Yes, he is doing just fine.

His thoughts begin to wander a little later as he slips inside for a glass of water, but Dean forces them back on track. No deviating. "That's how you get lost," his mother used to say when she caught Dean daydreaming in the backyard or at church.

Standing by the sink, Dean searches his brain for whatever he could do that would keep him away from his bedroom. He wishes they still had animals. Hard to call yourself a farm when you had no animals. Milking the cows and feeding the chickens used to be part of his routine. But, Dean learned when he arrived back home last June that the farm animals had been turned into drinking money.

Dean eventually settles on trying to paint for a few hours in the barn. It was the year-long project that he purposefully extended, so he had something to occupy his time during the months and keep his mind off things throughout the year.

It rarely worked, but Dean always thinks it will.

Sure enough, an hour later, Dean breaks down, paintbrush in hand.

He half wishes he brought the letter that currently resided in his room outside with him. The other half of him, the louder half, says that would have been a stupid idea and would have only made things worse. It would just make him cry like a girl, and his eyes would get all red-rimmed and his nose stuffed. It'd be difficult sitting at the table with his father looking like he just got dumped at a homecoming dance.

Questions would start, and Dean has managed to hold them off for a year. If they were ever asked, Dean would have to lie, and John has the annoying skill of knowing when Dean lies. The truth would be forced out of him, and Dean doesn’t want to think about where that conversation would go.

It’s better Dean didn’t bring the letter out with him.

But the painting isn’t a strong enough distraction for him. His hand is shaking, and despite the heat, he’s felt a wave of coldness descend over him twice. The desire to actually cry springs up several times, but Dean swallows it.

The small, cruel voice in the back of Dean’s mind begins to chatter again, unrelenting and unruly. Accusations and insults begin to bounce around in his head, and soon Dean can hear the names that the deeper, darker part of himself hisses, almost like they’re standing next to him in the barn.

Dean attempts to shrug it off and continue to paint; trying to put all his concentrated effort into the movement of the paintbrush. His hand shakes still, but he keeps his eyes on the bristles. Focus on that.

Focus on that.

When the sun gets too hot just past noon, Dean reluctantly retreats back into the house. Doctor’s orders. He is grateful that at least the unobstructed wind in Kansas can provide a small breeze, unlike New York where he still suffered inside during the summer.

But the lack of things to do around the property and inside the house makes Dean crazy. He’s surprised he's lasted a year.

John usually leaves Dean, sometimes for days at a time. He’d head into town to shoot the shit with the old-timers at the store or at Rudy’s; he’d play pool, and lose, but continue challenging people like he was a savant at the game; he’d spend a night drinking at Rudy’s. Sometimes two. Sometimes three.

Dean noticed as the year went on that John favored that third option almost exclusively.

Today, John decides to stay. Dean feels conflicted, both wanting his father to go away so he can grieve in private, but wanting his father to stay so Dean doesn’t sit alone in the house all night with only his thoughts to keep him company.

When Dean walks into the house, he sees John leaned back in his chair, snoring. A weathered book is face down on his lap, pages yellowed and dog-eared over the years. Dean suspects the opened beer can on the small table next to John is already empty.

Dean ignores him and makes the decision to go back upstairs despite every muscle in his body screaming not to.

Closing the door as quietly as he can, Dean decides not to latch it. The thought occurred, but his father doesn’t like locked doors, and the thing is so rusted he could break it down easily to see what Dean is hiding. The whole house is old and brittle, dried out in the Kansas sun. When a strong wind blows, it feels like the whole thing will come crumbling down.

Sometimes, Dean wishes it would.

Safe in his stuffy room, Dean eases onto his bed, tucked in the corner where his windows met in the northwest corner of the house. He takes care not to let the headboard bump against the wall. Taking a moment to steady his breathing, and wait for his heart rate to calm down, Dean pulls out his pocket knife from his trouser pocket. He leans to the window to his left, and angles the blade until its tip wedges into a blanket of wood under the windowsill. Wiggling the knife allows the wood to depart from the wall a little, and Dean pushes the knife in a little more and turns it, popping the wood out from the wall.

Dean pauses, trying to hear if there is any movement from downstairs. Confident his actions didn’t wake his father up, Dean turns back to the wall. He sneaks a hand into the space hollowed out inside the windowsill. It is a tight fit, but eventually, his fingertips brush against a folded piece of paper. It’s a struggle to get it off the little shelf it sits on, but Dean eventually succeeds in knocking it down. It falls onto the bedspread right next to the piece of wood.

Ignoring the paper, Dean replaces the wood and winces when it squeaks against the windowsill. He pauses again, expecting to hear John’s footsteps coming up the stairs, but none come. Satisfied, Dean grabs the paper and adjusts his pillow against the wall space between the windows.

Settled finally, Dean glances at the paper next to him. The desire to not open it, but instead burn it or throw it out the window overwhelms Dean, like the thing is a rabid animal waiting to bite him. Maybe it is; maybe it will.

 _Rip it up_ , his unhelpful brain begins to shout, _rip it up, rip it up, rip it up—_

Dean’s hand begins to shake as he forces himself to take the paper. He unfolds it from its tight creases. It was the first letter of the whole year that he folded, too afraid that the ink would be damaged and he wouldn’t be able to read the words anymore. But as a subconscious gesture perhaps, Dean folded this one. He didn’t want it contaminating the other letters; he wanted those words to fade.

Two days have passed since Dean grabbed the letter from their PO Box in town. The whole walk home Dean wondered if he should open it on the side of the road rather than at home. He knew what it was going to say.

Dean begins to realize as he smooths the paper out that he’d need more than two days to process it. Maybe he needed two weeks, two months—maybe years.

The rational side of him, quiet and almost drowned out by the ringing in Dean’s ears, tells him that this isn’t the end of the world. He's only twenty-five and while his window of opportunity is closing, there's still a chance. The possibility of finding a cutie in Kansas City, getting married, knocking her up, giving her family some grandkids (his father wouldn’t care) and settling on some other farm in maybe Nebraska—

That possibility still exists.

Even if it makes Dean’s stomach flip and twist every which way thinking about it.

It wasn’t the first time Dean was kicked to the curb. He attracted the girls his whole life. But then, the girls realized they couldn’t bring him under their thumb, and left him. It was a cycle until he broke free and moved to New York.

 _It’s different this time_ , disparaging voices hiss at him, _This time you cared._

His fingers run over the texture of the paper, seeing the words but refusing to take them in yet.

Dean knows, will always know, he will have to live with the knowledge that he will never find something like this again. When he was younger, he would sneak some of his mother’s novels up to his room in the dead of night. The main character always knew when they found _the one_. They’d overcome any obstacles, any forces or reasons that life threw at them trying to break them apart. The end result was always a lifelong bond that you’re meant to believe lasts until the end of time.

“The one” for Dean came, and now is gone. And Dean fucked it up. It took him months to accept that truth. There was no salvaging anything or walking through the obstacles or challenges together anymore. He fucked it up.

And his punishment is walking through the rest of his life knowing anything in the future would be a weak imitation of what he _had_.

Dean clears his throat and blinks his gaze into focus to concentrate on the words, seeing the familiar loopy cursive that took him three years to get used to. Up until January, that handwriting caused his heart to flutter, and not in the way that concerned his doctors.

_June 1st, 1944_

_To D,_

_I’ve received your last letter, and I want to make it clear that I don’t blame you. Even a week apart is hard, six months is worse, and there’s only so long either one of us can go before something breaks. Truth be told, I’ve been expecting this. My only wish was that you told me when it first happened. Withholding the truth is what hurts the most._

_Whatever role I had in your life, I hope it was insightful and something worth remembering fondly._

_Please know that while what I’m about to say may seem harsh, I still love you and care for you, and will continue to until God himself makes me stop (should He think He has that power). There’s not going to be a night going forward when I don’t think about you and our whole New York adventure. Let it be known that I would still walk the ends of the Earth for you._

_I don’t want to keep you tethered to me while I sit around over here, pretending like I know what I’m doing. I don’t know how long I’ll wind up staying, and it’s unfair to leave you like some miserable widow, never to see her lover return from war._

_You’re young and despite your health complications, you are lucky you aren’t here. You can be there for someone, and they won’t grow heart-sick over not seeing you._

_I want you to be free to go out there and make your mark on the world without worrying about me. Consider me part of your life experience, but don’t use me as an excuse to hole yourself up in that house with your father in the middle of nowhere. Please let go of me and allow yourself to roam and do what men do._

_This will be my last letter to you, but maybe one day our paths will cross again._

_Remember what I said earlier, that I will always love you, and will look back on you fondly and always wish you well._

_Please take care of yourself._

_Love, Cas_

The tremor that began in Dean’s hands travels up his arm, and spreads throughout his body. His teeth begin to chatter, despite the heat, and there’s that tell-tale pressure in his chest like someone punched him. The stress isn’t good for him, his doctor would say, and that it constricts the blood to the heart and shreds the vessels and “Try to make your life as easy as possible—“

Dean swallows hard and reads the letter again, kicking himself for being so stupid.

**June 5th, 1943**

**Christopher Street, West Village, New York**

The sun hit Dean in the face after it made its early morning journey across their bedroom floor. The downside of an east-facing apartment on the top floor: unobstructed summer sunlight.

Squinting at the sudden brightness, Dean squeezed his eyes shut and rolled over. In Kansas he had to wake up while the sun was only a faint bruise on the horizon—in New York he could sleep in.

As he settled onto his right side, Dean’s knees knocked against his bedfellow’s. The heat was already climbing in their room, but Dean still smiled to himself when he felt the warmth from the man next to him. It always gave him a small rush of both excitement and comfort.

Dean kept his eyes closed despite wanting to look. If he opened his eyes, then the day would begin, and he’d see the sheets over their dresser and chair in the room. He’d see some boxes already packed with their books and belongings.

It was their second to last day together, and Dean didn’t want it to start. The little in-between moment between yesterday and today was where he wanted to live. He didn’t want tomorrow, and he didn’t want Monday. Monday was when it would hurt. Monday was a day Dean hoped never came, and time would stop at one minute to midnight. Time would stop.

“Good morning, Dean,” a soft, sleepy voice greeted him mere inches away. A hand moved under the sheet, resting on Dean’s bare hip. A thumb brushed over sleep-warm skin, and Dean felt a shiver run up his spine. He scrambled inside his head to take in every second of the feeling, storing it away for the future when he’d undoubtedly need it.

Dean opened his eyes, greeted by bright blue ones watching him. Neither one of them smiled; neither one of them wanted the day to start.

“G’morning,” Dean whispered back. He forced his thoughts to pause. He wasn’t going to ruin one of their last mornings together for God knows how long. Shifting his hips, Dean tried getting the hand where it really needed to be.

Instead of obliging Dean, Cas moved his hand away, barely glancing Dean’s side on its way up to his face. Fingertips moved over some sensitive areas, and a smile finally broke out on Cas’s face as Dean squirmed. They didn’t move their eyes off each other, each one trying to take in as much as they could. A countdown was hanging over their heads. Dean feared what tomorrow morning would look like.

Or Monday.

Cas’s hand reached Dean’s face, resting gently on his cheek. Dean finally smiled himself, turned, and pressed his lips against Cas’s palm.

“Why does my hand get a kiss before my mouth?” Cas asked, frowning slightly. His voice stayed quiet as not to disturb the bubble that shrouded them from the outside world.

Dean’s smile morphed into a grin, “Because the thing I wanted to kiss is under a sheet and I’m too lazy to move.”

Cas inhaled sharply through his nose and Dean’s grin widened. It was a treat when he got Cas like this so fast and easy. They were high strung at the moment, but it was still a rush.

Narrowing his eyes, Cas tilted his hips by only half an inch, barely giving Dean the contact he wanted. That shattered Dean’s willpower.

“Don’t be a tease.”

“Don’t be lazy,” Cas responded like it was the most simple fact in the world.

Warmth pooled in Dean and without another thought, decided to give Cas what he wanted. Dean wanted it as well. They didn’t know when it’d come again.

Thursday night, the letter they both knew would come had been waiting for them in the mailbox. They didn’t know as they went about their day in the city that the hammer was ready to swing. It waited patiently for them to finish their day which was filled with a good lunch, better dinner, and a run to the bookstore. The bomb went off as Cas unlocked the mailbox to their apartment, and saw the seal of the U.S. government.

Only two months out of his master’s degree, and they nabbed Cas.

Ideally, those called into service would head there straight away, but Cas had called the local office and put on his best “sick” voice, and asked if he could wait until Monday.

Dean went silent as they headed upstairs to make the call, and couldn’t be with Cas in the room when he placed it.

As soon as he saw that letter he felt that familiar feeling in his chest, like someone left a three ton weight on top of him. His heart was beating fast, and Cas ordered him out of the living room before it got worse.

Even though they were prepared that it may happen, it still hit hard, like someone splashed icy water on them before shoving them into a brick wall.

Dean shifted himself up, heading for Cas’s mouth. Cas for his part closed his eyes and waited for it, but Dean kept himself mere centimeters away.

“Get on your back,” he ordered, keeping his voice low. Cas responded with another sharp inhale and a nod before obliging. His shoulders fell back on the mattress and Dean helped kick the sheets down completely. The bedspread was already lost overnight during another round of activity.

Being exposed to the open air did nothing to cool Dean down. It was an unusually warm June and they didn’t open the windows overnight. But Dean rode the wave of heat that encased him, and began to move.

He once again leaned into Cas, going for a kiss but not closing the distance completely. He only brushed his lips over Cas’s and the faint contact drew out a frustrated whine. Dean loved when he was rewarded with those little noises. Three years into their relationship and Dean still reveled in how different Cas sounded from the gals he’d fool around with. After a while, if Dean went in with as much energy as he did with Cas, the girls would get whiny and shrill, hurting his ears and taking him out of the moment. When they got breathy, they could wind up sounding more like they had asthma. When Cas hitched his breath or made any other kind of noise, it could sound downright animalistic.

“You’re a menace,” Cas murmured as Dean moved over to his neck. Dean hummed in agreement before continuing his journey down, placing soft kisses all the way. He went slow, doing his best to memorize every inch he could, fearful that when Monday came, everything would vanish from his head.

It also just helped to wind Cas up more. He placed his hands on either side of Dean’s head, threading fingers through his hair.

Dean felt his heart beginning to tick up in speed, combining with the heat, desire, and emotions behind everything. He paused at Cas’s hip, closing his eyes and focusing on the movement of Cas’s fingers skating through his hair.

“You okay?” Cas asked, concern lacing his words. Dean ignored it and just mouthed the hip bone under him. He moved slowly, heading down on an angle until he reached his target.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Dean answered, tapping on Cas’s leg. Cas took the signal and sat up a little more to get Dean more room at the foot of the bed.

As Dean wrapped a hand around Cas’s cock, he felt the man under him move again, and the hands left his head. He glanced up and saw Cas grab the brownie camera off of the night stand, and point the lease in his direction.

The camera was a birthday gift to Cas last August. In the beginning, he practiced with the buildings and scenery around New York. But, he soon realized that if he could get Dean to sit still long enough, they could document every moment spent together, including the bedroom. It took them another month to find a developer who ran in the same circles that Dean and Cas did, but find him they did.

Since Cas got the letter in the mail, he had been taking almost non-stop photos of Dean (and Dean took a few as well).

“Make sure you get my good angle,” Dean instructed, working his hand up and down loosely and watching Cas almost fumble the camera.

With the lens pointed at him, Dean looked away as Cas made to press the button, and took Cas into his mouth. Cas tensed as Dean sunk further and further down until there was nowhere else to go. No gag reflex had no meaning to the girls, but it meant everything with the guys.

Through a dull ringing in his ears, Dean heard the camera capture the moment. He stayed there for a moment before tightening his lips, adjusting himself, and traveled slowly back up. The pace was excruciatingly slow, and Dean knew it, but he needed to savor every moment of this that he could—

“Dean.” The voice that called him was rough and strangled. Dean glanced up, and before he could blink, the camera went off again. Smiling to himself, Dean continued upward, keeping his eyes now on Cas instead of closed. When he got to the tip, Dean cupped his tongue and moved it back and forth. That’s when Cas let the camera hit the bed beside him, and his hands went back to clutching Dean’s head. With every flick of his tongue, Cas tightened his grip on Dean’s hair.

Dean kept at it for a minute more, establishing a rhythm that felt right for that morning: slow and easy.

Cas tensed again and Dean prepared himself for the end, but instead he heard a “wait” followed by a tapping on his head.

Reluctant to leave, Dean brought himself all the way back up again, this time off completely. Keeping one hand around Cas, Dean looked back up. The man looked a mess without having to do much. The bed hair helped, and the heat from the morning sun now fully in the bedroom made his face flush red. He was breathing hard through his nose, and his eyes were closed.

“I was just about to get to the good part,” Dean said with not much malice. He knew what was about to happen.

Cas shook his head and took a hand and passed it over his face, finally opening his eyes as his palm covered his mouth. He stared at Dean with wild eyes contrasting with the pink in his face. A noise came out from behind his hand, but Dean frowned.

“I didn’t hear that.”

Rolling his eyes, Cas took his hand off his mouth and started to shimmy himself upward, away from Dean.

“I said ‘get on your front’,” Cas said, loud and clear, “I want all of you.”

The part of the sentence not said, but both of them knew was there hanging between them, was “because soon I won’t be able to have any part of you”.

Dean felt his heart quicken a little bit at that, but not to a concerning level. However, when he went back up to the head of the bed, Cas slid a hand over his chest.

“Are you—“

Dean nodded, “I’m doing okay. I’ll let you know if you need to stop.”

Following orders, Dean slid onto his front, arms resting under the pillow his head laid on. Cas’s hands immediately got to work, and Dean shivered. When it was this warm, and they went this many rounds in the sheets, he started to get sensitive.

“Up,” Cas said, hands resting on Dean’s backside.

Dean again obliged and angled himself up on his knees, hips in the air while his head stayed on the pillow. He closed his eyes as he felt the hands begin to wander. Cas may be close, but Dean probably wouldn’t last too long either once they got going. He inhaled fast when a finger brushed over his , the raw sensitivity sending spikes of pleasure up and down Dean’s body. His heart didn’t pick up though, and he counted that as a good thing.

“I should be fine from a few hours ago,” he mumbled into the pillow, eyes still closed as he couldn’t help but lean into Cas’s small movements, little circular patterns which alternated between soft and firm.

Without a word, Cas pressed a little harder against Dean. The finger teasing him slipped in, just a little. Easy. Cas did another, pushing in farther. Dean let all his breath out in one large exhale.

“I guess you’re right,” Cas confirmed, and continued going. He angled his hand and hit that spot that made Dean want to just collapse, even more so now after a night of it constantly under siege.

Trying to get his breathing under control, Dean tensed around the fingers, “You better get a move on.”

Cas paused for a moment before withdrawing completely.

“Give me the camera.”

The brownie laid beside Dean’s shoulder, and he moved an arm to grab it and hand it back to Cas.

No more words passed between them. Dean felt the brownie go back onto the mattress beside Cas as hands grabbed him at the hips, pulling him backward a little more. One hand left, to act as guidance, and Dean inhaled deep.

If he was slow earlier, Cas was even slower now. He took his time as he slid easily into Dean thanks to their romp only a few hours before. Dean didn’t need much work anyjmore either. They knew their twenties were the most optimal time to have as much sex as you could before your body started to give up.

Cas bottomed out and Dean finally exhaled against the pillow, eyes closed once more. He didn’t know how many times they did this in the past three years, but it felt like the first time every time.

The sound of the camera going off brought him back down to earth, and Dean pushed back in earnest this time, desperate for some motion. He could feel the tremor beginning to course throughout his body and he needed relief. It was another one of those times he wanted to last forever, but was also too impatient to wait for.

The brownie hit the bed once more, and both hands were back on Dean’s hips, guiding him. Dean felt a thrum of excitement, like butterflies in his stomach but stronger, and relaxed every muscle he could while staying upright. He wanted it, and he couldn’t decide if he wanted it fast, slow, somewhere in between. Something drawn out but something fast so they could pick up and do it again; something dirty and filthy or tender and sweet. They did it all, and Dean wanted everything before Cas left.

Cas never drew back completely, but rolled into Dean a few times, his angle changing every time until he found the target his fingers did. Dean’s legs began to shake at that as wave after wave of heat coursed through him. The only bit of sadness that remained was a familiar one, the one that chastised him for ever holding this part of him back. He couldn’t imagine having another man in his bed, but he wondered what would have happened if back in Kansas he—

Cas began to pick up the pace, wrenching a deep groan and a curse out of Dean. It was too much. Everything was too much. Dean struggled to keep Monday morning out of his head. He needed more.

“I need to—,” he gasped, beginning to squirm against Cas, “Don’t stop, I just need—“

Without missing a beat, Cas’s hands left their position and braced him on either side of Dean on the mattress.

“Move,” he said, voice low and rough again. Dean obliged for the third time that morning and lowered his legs, Cas following him all the way down. He pressed Dean into the mattress while situating himself between Dean’s spread legs. Dean groaned again as his cock became trapped between himself and the sheet, moving slightly as Cas nudged him with his own movements. He held his breath as Cas lowered himself onto his forearms. They landed on either side of Dean, keeping a small distance between himself and Dean’s shoulders while pressing him gently against the mattress. It was more heat, but it didn’t overpower Dean who rolled his hips back as much as he could, trying to get Cas to start. He needed it. Damn trying to make it last. Cas slid his arms forward enough for his hands to wrap around Dean’s wrists under the pillow, and Dean felt the ring of fire burn all the way up his arms.

They were well practiced by now. They could anticipate every move, every word, every small hitch in their breath as someone moved in _just_ the right way. Dean used to hate the familiarity growing up. Not that he slept around with all the gals around town, it was a small town and word spread fast, but once a girl thought she had a firm handle on who he was, he dashed. Once the mystery was gone, there was nothing interesting about their relationship anymore.

But that changed when Dean moved and met Cas.

It took him three years to understand just how unstable his life was. The change to normalcy was strange, and Dean refused it at first, uncomfortable without the usual safety net of “that’s just how I grew up”.

The cruel thing was that now he felt like he had a firm grasp on his life; he had a partner that lasted longer than a month, a job with the same time frame, and a roof over his head for three years.

And it was all about to be taken away again.

As Cas moved, their bodies rolling as one continuous wave, Dean closed his eyes and concentrated on their breathing, determined to keep those panicked thoughts out of his head. Not right now. Nothing to spoil what little time they had left—

“Fuck,” Dean gasped, frustrated with himself. He felt everything beginning to pool in his head, behind his eyes, threatening tears. Everything just felt good, everything _was_ good.

What a fucking ninny.

Cas slowed but Dean didn’t want that. He wanted constant movement, to keep him in the moment—they slow down and he knew that he really wouldn’t be able to keep everything back.

“We’ll be alright,” Cas murmured, so close and clear that it felt like he was in Dean’s head. His words said one thing, but Dean heard that small, minuscule waver in Cas’s voice.

It brought Dean back to paying attention to their non-word noises, their movements, and the fire pooling inside him that was almost at a bursting point. Cas had begun to stutter his movements, unable to keep up the steady rhythm he had before. He was near the end as well.

Lips pressed against the back of his neck, and a pressured ringing began bouncing around in his ears again. Dean knew he was also starting to lose the pace as well, not rocking anymore but trying to get every last bit of contact and fullness he could. It was familiar, comforting, and if he could stay in this bed all day and keep doing it—

Cas lifted himself up in a sudden movement that caused Dean to jump. A rush of cooler air (by comparison) washed over Dean’s back, and he realized Cas had let go of Dean’s wrists, and lifted himself back up on his forearms, his hips also lifting slightly as well. Dean made to catch them, not caring that an embarrassing whine of frustration escaped from him in the process.

As Cas shifted his angle again, he pushed back into Dean faster than before a few times. Every time he went back in, he dragged himself across that oversensitive spot inside that acted as a switch in Dean’s brain.

All thoughts ceased for the first time since he woke, and Dean’s hands clenched the sheets under them. He dug his forehead into the pillow and pushed back against Cas as the fire inside him spread like a lightning bolt throughout his body, from the tips of his fingers to his toes. The dull ringing from earlier left abruptly, replaced by hearing his own gasps for air. Someone was swearing. Dean squeezed his eyes shut, seeing stars in the black, as one wave passed, then another. It attempted to wash away any fears that tried to cling to him.

Cas for his part lifted himself back up fully, grabbing Dean again and pulling him as close as physically possible. As Dean tensed, he felt Cas circle his hips, never leaving. It had the feeling of irony.

Dean met him with each movement, however slight it was, rolling backward and staying nestled against Cas. He finally smiled as Cas tightened his grip on Dean, his fingers digging into skin in a way that was almost painful, but skated the edge. Instead of the quick snaps he did as he came, Cas just held there and Dean moved against him, determined to get everything he possibly could. Whatever he could take to help store away the memories to call on when Cas left, Dean was going to take. Dean would remember the shaky inhale from behind him as he squeezed and rocked against Cas; he’d remember his desire that small little bruises would form where Cas held tight, like he was afraid Dean would leave; he’d remember how it felt to have hands grab him around his wrists, practically pinning him to the bed; he’d remember what it felt like to have Cas settling some of his weight over Dean, also practically pinning him to the bed.

He’d remember everything, but only if they stayed there for as long as possible.

A moment passed, and Dean’s breathing started to return to normal along with Cas’s.

It was when Cas held Dean still while he pulled out that the tears came back, knowing Dean finally had his guard down. He turned his head to face the window as Cas shifted and made to lay back down on the bed. Embarrassment climbed its way up into his cheeks, making his face feel even hotter.

Who the hell cries after sex?

A hand slid over Dean, slowly traveling up to his shoulders, and brushing a thumb over the back of his neck. It stayed there a moment before traveling back down to the small of Dean’s back, skating fingertips over skin and sending a shiver up Dean’s spine. Any other time it would be comforting, but it only made Dean shake more while trying to restrain the overflow of emotions that wanted to unleash all at once.

“Dean,” Cas said after a minute, his voice unbearably gentle. It broke whatever final lock Dean had trying to hold the tide back. Hot tears fell over the bridge of his nose, sideways down onto the pillow under him. It made the space between his eyes itch, and he reached a hand up to rub at it.

There was the one image that he couldn’t get out of his mind. If Dean was truthful with himself, the image sprang up four months prior when Cas’s brother cut off money for Cas’s medical degree. Dean knew the army was going to scoop him up fast, and he knew that if Michael would cut Cas off from a medical degree, then he wouldn’t cough up the money to get Cas out of the draft.

It was all Dean’s fault, even if Cas said it wasn’t. It was all because of a damn phone call—

The image that kept flashing through Dean’s mind got stronger when the letter came two nights prior, and now with his eyes squeezed shut, he couldn’t stop seeing it.

Cas laying in some city, or some field, brains shot out by some Nazi fucker and left for dead. No one knows he’s there, no one really cares. No one can save him, and he died alone, scared, with no help—

The hand began its journey back up to Dean’s shoulders. Taking a deep breath, Dean wiped his eyes and took a shaky breath.

“I don’t want you to go,” Dean whispered, hardly audible on the breath it rode on. He hated how scared he sounded. Never in his life had he felt like this; not when his mother died, not when his father hit him for the first time, not when Sam picked up and relocated the minute he turned 16, not when Dean moved to the city on his own without so much as a dollar in his pocket.

Dean wasn’t scared. He was terrified.

“I know,” Cas answered, not able to say much else. He sounded just as miserable as Dean felt.

And when Dean finally turned his head, he saw that Cas had been crying too.

The recent arrival, an infantry man, lays in a bed at the 203rd General Hospital. Bandages wind around his head, and soft gauze covers his eyes. His right leg rests in a cast, elevated a little above him, and while he hasn’t moved (other than for a sip of water or to relieve himself) he hears the doctors talking around his bed. They don’t believe his leg will ever be back to functioning.

Some of the nurses try to speak with the man, but he doesn’t speak back.

He was found by the Canadians just outside Caen. His uniform was torn and bloodied in some areas, and the soldiers who found him were shocked he could walk with his leg all torn up. They blamed adrenaline. There was no way to identify him, and his eyes looked red and irritated by smoke or gas. While the man only mumbled, the Canadians heard the American accent, and were convinced he was not German.

They packed him up with a French medical unit, and shipped him off to the recently settled 203rd in Cirencester. By the time he arrived, he was unconscious and not speaking. The doctors tended to his eyes, head wound, and leg. All of it caused them some worry.

The nurses wonder where he’s from, and the doctors try asking. The man remembers a sunlit bedroom with a hardwood floor, unmade bed, and a well-loved mahogany desk. He knows where he’s from—

But the words never come.


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER TWO**

**June 7th, 1944**

**Pomona, Kansas**

The late-spring heat lulls Dean into a sleep. He had tucked the letter under his pillow, not wanting to go through the process of opening the sill back up.

He shouldn’t be upstairs on a day like today, the heat is edging on the side of _too much,_ but he doesn’t want to go downstairs and face his father until he’s able to pull himself together. Broken up with or not, the discovery by his father wouldn’t win Dean any gold stars. This is the same man who eyed Dean suspiciously for wanting to spend the night at his friend’s house when they were ten so they could watch the 4th of July fireworks together; the same man who called Dean a sissy for not wanting to date Mr. Krammers daughter and take her to the prom, wanting to go with his friends instead; the same man who almost caught Dean and Lee behind the bleachers and still yelled because Dean had no good excuse as to why they were sitting so close together.

The third time was the last time he allowed himself to be so blasé around John. Dean accepted a long time ago that he’d always have a target on his back, unable to leave the blinding spotlight of his father’s judgement.

Dean had gotten used to it, but when Sam left and Dean took off for the east coast, all that knowledge seemed to slip away.

Even a year after returning to the farm, Dean still feels like he’s walking on unstable ground and will be found out the minute he wakes up in the morning.

Dean doesn’t know how long he slept when John shakes him awake. The sudden movement shocks him and he jumps before he can open his eyes.

“Damn boy, I thought you were dead,” John grumbles, stepping away from the bed. “You’re not supposed to be up here right now, get downstairs before you have a heart attack.”

The sun doesn’t look like it traveled at all in the sky as Dean lifts himself from his bed, groggy and yawning but feeling his heart already starting to race. It speeds itself up as Dean sits fully upright, and his chest already starts to ache. Having John’s face right in front of his own while he woke from a deep sleep didn’t help, Dean figures, but his father is right. Heat is Dean’s nemesis. New York wasn’t much better, but they at least had a beach a train ride away.

The memory of him and Cas traveling farther than usual a summer ago and ending up at a beach in Milford fills up Dean’s mind, and he knows that it reads across his face. But he can’t pull it back. That day was one that happened just after Cas was gifted the camera. They stayed the night in the Connecticut town, sleeping on the beach itself, tucked away on a little inlet. The breeze off the Long Island Sound that night was cooling, which served them well as they left their clothes next to the blanket and—

“What’s wrong with you?” John asks, voice cutting through the clip show running through Dean’s mind. He’s still standing by the bed, watching Dean with suspicion growing on his face. Dean knows that look. That is the sleepover look, the prom look, the bleachers look—

“Nothing,” Dean says, sliding off the bed to stand, “felt dizzy.”

The less words the better.

John doesn’t change his expression but gives Dean a shallow nod of acknowledgment before heading out of the room, “Get downstairs and have some water.”

Dean stands as his father descends down the stairs. He grips the edge of his desk for balance, truly getting dizzy for a moment. Confident he won’t fall over, Dean turns to smooth out his bed sheets when something catches his eye.

The corner of Cas’s letter sticks out from under his pillow, the white contrasting against Dean’s blue sheets.

John saw it.

Panic shoots through Dean as he shoves his hand under his pillow and snatches the envelope, his heartbeat ricocheting between his ears and unable to hear anything else. He can’t put it in the dresser, that would make too much noise; desk drawer as well. There is no time to put it back where it came from, so Dean instead whips out his pocket knife and lifts the top corner of his mattress. There, he makes a small slit before folding the paper more so it’ll fit.

“Dean,” John’s voice floats back up to him, impatient.

Hardly breathing, Dean manages to get the paper inside the mattress and eases it back down on the bed frame.

“I’m coming, still need a minute,” he calls down, his voice sounding dull and clogged in his head. He yawns again to pop his ears while pressing a hand to his chest.

He prays to God that his father doesn’t rip apart his bed looking for that letter.

As Dean heads downstairs, he silently wishes to himself that he burned the damn thing when he had the chance.

****

**June 7th, 1943**

**Amtrak Regional #225, New York to Washington D.C.**

The steady rocking of the train almost put Dean to sleep.

The railcar was stuffy, but thankfully not overcrowded so Dean still felt like he could breathe. The old lady sitting at the small table at the front of the car had a perfume that made Dean’s eyes and throat burn, and the businessman twirled an unlit cigar in his finger while reading the paper. Dean thanked him silently for not lighting it.

Sleep did sound like a good option for Dean, settling in for a two-day train ride back out to Kansas City. He didn’t know when he’d actually get it, but the wild thought of closing his eyes and waking back up inside the Christopher Street apartment was alluring. It would all be a dream. A very horrible, terrifying, and gut-wrenching dream but it would still only be just a dream. Dean could roll over and see Cas where he usually was, see all their belongings where they usually were, and have the sun rays sneak across the bedroom floor like they usually did.

But he didn’t close his eyes, because the disappointment of reality when he opened them again would be too much for him to handle.

Instead, Dean watched the coastline roll by, the water glaring off the water in Delaware. Another wild thought raced through his head: jump out of the train and go take a dip in the Atlantic.

It was hot.

They didn’t usually go to Coney Island until it was Cas’s birthday in August, but Dean wondered, if it were a normal Monday, if he could convince Cas to take the day off. Get away from school, and Dean could also ask for the day off from the little dive bar he worked at. They’d hop the train, ignore the discomfort from the heat and sit as close together as they dared, and go have some fun. Cas looked good on the rare occasion he dressed down enough with a light pair of trousers and a white t-shirt, and when the rides really got to him, his face looked wild with his hair every which way. Dean would remark on that for the millionth time, and Cas would make a comment about the slight sunburn that Dean always got while out walking the pier.

 _Stop it,_ a small voice snapped at Dean in the back of his mind, as he felt a cold wave of sadness wash over him.

Their last night together consisted of leftover meatloaf, finishing boxing up their scarce belongings, and laying in bed for several sleepless hours just taking in each other’s presence. It would be the last time, for a long time, they’d see the sight again. They let the tears flow, unashamed. Dean realized it’d be the last time he’d be able to do that for the foreseeable future. He was already shrinking inside himself, just laying in bed and watching Cas as he eventually drifted off to sleep. A list had begun to form in his head of what to avoid with his father and what was going to be acceptable. The first list was much more substantial than the other.

_No crying, no touching, do your work, keep your head down, don’t show any other emotion other than a determination to get things done, don’t say anything other than “yes sir”. Keep your wise-ass remarks to yourself._

Dean hardly slept. His eyes were trying to burn the memory of Cas into his head. Every detail. Cas had a habit of looking rather tired and stressed during the day, more like he worked on Wall Street instead of heading to class. Maybe the classes were as bad; Dean wouldn’t know.

But when Cas slept, it was as if anything and everything that he shouldered during the day melted away. Dean once said Cas de-aged several years when he hit the pillow, to which Cas asked, rather shocked, how old he looked on a day-to-day basis. Dean didn’t answer that.

As they laid in bed, Dean watching, he wondered how old and weary Cas would look like when he returned from Europe.

 _If he returned,_ his brain had thrown out, unhelpful and worried. Dean moved closer to Cas and closed his eyes, trying to enjoy the last moments they had of closeness and body warmth.

Their goodbye had been short as they stood apart from each other, like stone statues.

They couldn’t display any affection like the couples around them, not unless they wanted four black eyes and a kick to the jewels, but Dean had half a mind to do it anyway. With each and every shrill giggle or whine from a skinny blonde girl, Dean inched closer and closer to acting out of spite.

But he hadn’t.

Instead, they just stood next to each other, in the back of the crowd so no one saw their hands brushing together. It was the last bit of contact they’d have, and Dean wanted every bit he could get.

When the bus pulled up to the side of the curb, they shook hands as friends should do. It was hard to look Cas in the eye, but Dean kept his focus, trying not to let the misery show on his face, for everyone to see.

As their palms met, Dean felt the pinned tip of a folded paper poke him. He glanced down and saw a small, folded rectangle that had once been a piece of Cas's stationary paper resting in his palm. Through the paper, Dean could see Cas’s loopy handwriting.

The familiar sound of padlocks slamming into place drummed up again inside Dean’s mind, securing themselves over any gate that held the emotions back. He almost felt the cement pouring through his veins, freezing him in place—otherwise he would grab Cas’s hand and march back to the apartment, barricading them from all the government’s horses and all of their men.

But Dean stayed still, and watched as Cas slowly backed away with a sad sad smile on his face. He hiked up his bag and gave Dean a little wave, all while Dean felt like the concrete under him had crumbled away, and the ground was ready to swallow him whole. The noise around him quieted, and he could hear his heartbeat rattling around in his ears, along with his deep breaths.

Cas turned, accepting the inevitable, and followed the other men onto the bus. Dean watched as he made his way down the aisle, picking a window seat closer to the back. All the girls around him, and a few parents, tearfully waved goodbye or reached up to the lowered windows, grabbing onto a hand—but Dean could only stand there.

If he moved, he was storming the bus.

Through the glass, Dean could only watch as Cas’s face dropped to a level of sadness that was never observed before between them. Cas finally glanced out the window, and only brought his hand up a little, just enough for Dean to see some fingers tap against the glass. Keeping his hand by his side, Dean waggled his fingers too.

It was all they could do.

The door screeched closed, and Dean felt the noise drive a knife straight through his soul. Cas’s look of sadness didn’t change.

As the bus pulled away, Dean wondered if that would be the last time he’d see Cas’s face.

Four hours later, Dean was on the train.

He had very little to carry to the train station, only two cases with his clothing, the pictures they took, miniaturized and tucked away; his toothbrush, another pair of shoes, and two books also accompanied the clothing. That was it.

While packing the rest of his things that morning, Dean moved around their apartment in a daze, touching things that were covered in white sheets or their boxes. Their bed was stripped of its sheets and sat in their bedroom, exposed, and unused. Dean wanted to go over and sit on it for a minute, but didn’t think he could stomach it.

If his prediction about going home was going to be right, he had to start buttoning it all up now.

Nothing in the apartment was truly theirs: the couch was found in the first month they moved in together; the bed frame was a second-hand deal by one of Cas’s college friends who was moving to Syracuse; the sheets were their own, and so was the oak dresser; the desk was Cas’s from home; the bookshelf they’d saved up to buy.

The one thing from the room Dean figured he’d miss the most, other than their bed, was the radio. While it was smaller, it was still too big to carry. They had played it sometimes to drown themselves out from a neighbor, or just had it on while lounging around on a weekend. It was nice to have a tune to tap your foot to. There was a radio at the farm, but it had been broken for years even before Dean left. He doubted his father had fixed it. Another downside going back: abject silence.

Tucked away in one of the boxes was the brownie camera. Cas elected not to take it with him, not wanting to damage it or have it stolen. Dean had half a mind to take it back to the farm with him, take some pictures to mail to Cas for entertainment—but there was nowhere in tiny Pomona, probably no where in Kansas City either, to get that racy film developed, unless Dean wanted to be carried away in handcuffs. Or stuffed in a ditch, dead as a doornail.

And whoever read the letters over Cas’s shoulder at camp would be confused to see those pictures. It’d get Cas in trouble too.

Dean ignored the camera, and proceeded to leave the final rent check on the counter on his way out. When he closed the door, another rattle of nerves and fear rocked through him, shaking his already fragile spirit. It felt like he had permanently severed a part of himself. Cas had been the first cut, and now not even being able to live in their space with their things and their memories was the second, and final, cut.

All of their stuff would be picked up by Michael or Cas’s other brothers at some point in the week and hauled back to Salisbury, Connecticut.

Dean wondered if he’d ever see their things again.

On the train, as they chugged away from Delaware and into Maryland, Dean reached above his head to the luggage rack, wanting to pull one of the books down to distract himself with. He had two days of travel and he couldn’t spend it all sleeping or staring out a window.

Dean grabbed his well-worn copy of ‘A Farewell to Arms’, and settled back into his seat. As he fingered the sides of the pages, trying to find the folded corner, he felt some of them separate from each other with something caught in the middle.

Frowning, Dean flipped open the book to the spot, and saw the folded letter Cas had left in his hands that morning. Dean didn’t remember putting it in there, but then again, he didn’t remember much about the day so far.

Setting the book aside, Dean took the paper and unfolded it, smoothing out the creases. He squinted at Cas’s ridiculous handwriting, and began to read:

_June 5th, 1943_

_Dear Dean;_

_I didn’t intend on writing a pre-leave letter, but here I am writing one, and here you are now reading it. Getting the notice from Uncle Sam this afternoon is scaring me out of a good night’s sleep._

_It’s also giving me a chance to say your name properly before I have to start using nicknames to fool the officers who like to pry open mail (in case we’re spies. The idiocy of anyone who is a spy using a letter to openly talk about uncoded, classified things is a spy who deserves the noose). But with the things I plan on writing to you, and they see that you are not a she but, in fact, a he, I may get into some trouble._

_So here I am right now, writing your name over and over: Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean… I’d go on but I also don’t want to feed your ego too much._

_And oh, the things I plan on writing to you. It will be horrible going that long without your legs wrapped around me and the feeling of your thighs tensing every time I move in just the right way. I will be going absolutely crazy not having a warm body waking up to me every morning and giving me a good excuse not to get out of bed all day. Your lips, by the way, are sinful, and those I will miss as well, maybe most of all. Either on my own mouth or around my_ — _maybe I should stop. I don’t know where you’ll be reading this (hopefully on the train and you have to keep glancing around to double check no one sees that blush covering your face)._

_To make up for the lack of those things in my day to day going forward, I will instead write what I desire and send it to you, since I know you’ll share in my pain (and abject lust). I guarantee you that while I’m sent away on that bus to New Jersey, it’ll be hard to not imagine what we could have been doing instead (remember the thing I said about your mouth!)_

_I’m writing this while you’re sleeping. You pushed the sheet down again. Everything is on display. The lamp next to me does your skin favors in the dark, and everything is just begging me to come over there, wake you up, and have my way with you like I did only a couple hours ago._

_But, I’ll let you rest. I know we have the desire to stay awake until the morning comes when I leave, but we’re no good to each other tired and cranky._

_As you’re reading this, whenever and wherever, I hope you remember that I will always love you, and no amount of distance will change that._

_Love, Cas_

When Dean blinked he felt the tears he had fought back all morning and afternoon come to the surface. He pulled the letter out of the way before the water could fall onto it and ruin the ink. Heat rose to Dean’s cheeks as he glanced up, trying to subtly wipe his face. The old lady had her eyes closed (Dean wondered if she had died) and the fat guy still had his face buried in the newspaper. No one else. He was alone.

 _Get it together,_ Dean told himself, closing his own eyes, taking a deep breath. The train lurched and Dean rocked, but he kept his eyes closed until the tightness in his throat ebbed. It felt like someone had a hand wrapped around his neck, trying to squeeze the tears out.

Swallowing, Dean finally opened his eyes with a deep inhale. His thumb had been running over the paper and he looked back down at the words. The image it painted triggered those memories, just the previous night where they pressed close together, unable to stand an inch of distance between them; the previous month when they went to Rhinebeck for a weekend just to get out of the city and forget the fact Cas couldn’t go back to school. They didn’t leave their cabin once. There was their first kiss three months after their first meeting, their first night together two weeks after that, and the next thing he knew, Dean moved in by the beginning of June.

Three years really went by fast. Goddamn, Dean did want Cas back in-between his legs.

Dean shifted on his seat, forcing his thoughts to rainy city streets and garbage day, knocking down that all too familiar fire spreading through his already heated body.

Instead of putting the letter into his suitcase, Dean kept it tucked between some pages later on in the book, serving as a rediscovery of treasure later in the future as he rode home.

A week and a half after the man from Caen arrives, he speaks.

He first asks for water, because he can remember what that’s called. The thing that he likes to eat, the thing he would make fast, wouldn’t come to mind. So he can’t ask for it. They ask him to write it down but he can’t. He draws an image, and someone says “sandwich” which he can repeat just fine. He wants a sandwich. They ask him what kind, and that there’s too many to write down for him to choose. The nurses wind up bringing him a sandwich with _____ and cheese.

The man tries it, hates it, and they bring him soup instead.

Three days after he starts eating and drinking, he’s visited by doctors and nurses, all trying to explain to him what’s happening. He’ll most likely have a permanent _____ and whatever is making words vanish in his head will hopefully subside within the coming weeks. They don’t look too optimistic.

He can’t name his home in _______. The visuals are there, and he can talk about it, but it is only a bedroom with a ______ and sheets that were never folded and tucked over the mattress. There was a bookshelf, a radio, a ______, and a window that shone bright sunlight across the hard____ floors.

There’s a person there. The man knows the person sitting on the bed, back to the rest of the room, pulling _____ over his feet and saying something that the man can’t understand.

His dreams are filled with images of that bedroom.

The doctors call a nearby military office and say they have an American with Anomic aphasia, most likely caused by the blunt force trauma of the butt of a gun to his head.


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER THREE**

**June 8th, 1944**

**Pomona, Kansas**

Cleaning the hunting rifles provides Dean with nothing other than something for his hands to do. It keeps his mind focused on something that isn’t Cas, or that letter. He’d had a dream where he flew over to England to find Cas—to apologize, beg, cry, something and anything to get him back. In dreamland, Dean was unsuccessful.

When he woke up in the morning, still sleep-hazy, he almost packed his bags and made the trek back to the east coast and flew over there. Cas’s camp is still on the envelopes. He could do it. It’d be rough, and he’d have to borrow money or steal it or—

It had taken Dean all of three minutes to come to his senses. Even if he could have gone over there, there was no point. He did what he did, he screwed up, and this was how life had to go on for him. Cas made himself clear. Move on.

But the fantasy of hopping on that big ol’ bird and having Cas take him back had stuck with Dean throughout his morning chores.

When he’d had to come back inside for the afternoon, the sun once again beating down on their shadeless farm, he’d picked up the guns.

John had watched him with an expression Dean couldn’t read in just a glance, but it was all he was willing to spare his father. Any longer and Dean feared John would see right through the thin mask he had on.

So, Dean cleans the guns. They don’t need cleaning, since they are never used—there’s nothing to hunt—but Dean cleans them anyway. He and Sam used to race each other to see who could finish first. Mindless activities. Dean finds it isn’t as fun though without someone next to him.

But he keeps doing it.

While on the third rifle, he hears a faint sputtering engine outside, growing louder. As the sound approaches, it’s mixed with a rattling metallic noise, indicative of an old, dilapidated vehicle.

John lifts himself out of his chair and heads to the screen door, a frown on his face.

“About damn time,” he grumbles, peeking through the mesh. Dean resists the urge to roll his eyes. They always get the paper late—no difference if it is a day or two days, they are always behind.

Dean doesn’t take his eyes off the gun but his attention shifts from it to John now heading outside.

Mr. Smith pulls up, Dean hearing the tires roll over the gravel in front of the porch. He automatically tenses and hopes his father will keep Smith outside. The man is an eighty-year-old crank who hates everyone under the age of sixty (barring John). He has liver spots on his bald head and has a back hunch that makes him look like the letter “C”. He can spit tobacco farther than anyone else in Pomona, and is missing several teeth.

And Smith never liked Dean.

“Thought you were dead. You better have two in there,” Dean hears John say as the door to the truck slams. There’s a watery sniff of the nose, and Dean hears footsteps coming up the porch. He sighs and picks up the final rifle, already knowing what is coming.

“Well I woulda come but Martha had some trouble yesterday with the heat, and woulda been here soona today but had some trouble at the store,” Smith explains as they enter the house. John heads to the kitchen table and deposits the papers. “Lee and Benny were rough housin’ and damn near kicked over an entire shelf of Betty’s jam.”

Dean can hear Smith turn towards him, and continues on with the rifle. He feels a chill run through him and hardens his face in the presence of two nosy men who’d easily ask him why he looked like he swallowed a lemon.

Dean hasn’t spoken to Benny or Lee in two months, with good reason, and isn’t about to be hauled down to the store to lecture them. He isn’t their keeper, and they don’t give a damn about him—

“Kids need a real job, not just workin’ at Rudy’s,” John says, grabbing a glass from the cabinet. “Surprised they haven’t been picked up yet.”

There it was.

Swallowing the sigh that wants to escape, Dean realizes he’s been working on the same spot for a little too long and shifts his hand.

“Nah, no draft notice yet, but I’m hopin’,” Smithy says, and Dean hears the sneer in his voice, “Nothin’ whooped my Frankie into shape more than joining the army and servin’ in the war. Teaches you character and to appreciate the finer things in life and these two need a wakin’ up to the real world.”

Dean vaguely wonders if the rifle in his hand is loaded. John hands Smith a glass of some kind of alcohol he was able to find and Dean’s relieved to hear the scraping of the kitchen chairs, deciding to stay out of the sitting room.

There’s the sound of rustling paper as Smith swallows loudly and makes a noise of satisfaction.

“Invasion?” John says, confused.

“Ayuh,” Smith says, and Dean hears a finger tapping on the paper, “Them boys are doin’ somethin’ and will come home as heroes. Well, the ones that’ll live in any case. But they’ll be dyin’ for a cause in any case.”

It takes a moment for the words to sink into Dean, bringing with them some red flags. He looks up from the gun and across the way to the kitchen.

John is sitting at the table, eyes glued to the paper while Smith finishes the last of his drink with a happy smack of the lips. The look on his father’s face takes the red flags and begins waving them hysterically in Dean’s head.

Forgetting his desire to stay away from Smith, Dean lifts himself off the couch, his eyes focused on the paper in his father’s hands. When he approaches the table, Smith ignores him but John looks up, handing Dean the paper silently. As Dean takes it, he sees the large, blocky black headline from June 6th that is sure to grab even a blind man’s attention:

**INVASION**

SUPREME HEADQUARTERS ALLIED EXPEDITIONARY FORCE (AP) —

Allied troops landed on the Normandy coast of France in tremendous strength by cloudy daylight today and stormed several miles inland with tanks and infantry in the grand assault which Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower called a crusade in which “we will accept nothing less than full victory.”

German broadcasts said the Allies penetrated several kilometers between Caen and Isigny, which are 35 miles apart and respectively nine and two miles from the sea.

Prime Minister Churchill told the House of Commons part of the record-shattering number of parachute and glider troops were fighting in Caen, and had seized a number of important bridges in the invasion area.

German opposition apparently was less effective than expected, although fierce in many respects, and the Germans said they were bringing reinforcements continuously up to the coast, where “a battle for life or death is in progress.”

The seaborne troops, led by Gen. Sir Bernard L. Montgomery, surged across the channel from England by 4,000 regular ships and additional thousands of smaller craft….

The front page also includes photographs of Eisenhower, Roosevelt, and a map of Normandy in relation to the countries of France and England.

The story continues, but Dean’s eyes lock onto the words “battle for life and death.” A dull ringing starts in his ears, and when Smith starts talking again, it sounds muffled and distant.

Dean’s gaze wanders back up to the map, showing the southern coast of England and where the troops more or less launched from.

One of the ports Dean thinks he recognizes, but can’t be sure.

He hopes he’s wrong. He needs to be wrong.

Nothing could be done with his father conscious and Smith still at the table, so Dean just gives a nod to his father and to Smith, while handing back the paper. He walks back to his seat in the other room while the two men begin talking to each other again, his heart beating a mile a minute.

Later that evening, Dean sits on his bed, staring out the window as the sun sets, casting the farm in a fiery golden light. His father has fallen asleep downstairs, but Dean doesn’t dare move until he is certain John is in for the night; certain he won’t walk into the room while Dean has a fistful of letters in his hands, trying to ascertain if Cas just potentially sailed straight into Death’s arms.

**June 8th, 1943**

**Kansas City Union Station, Missouri**

Dean’s mood fouled by the time he reached Kansas City. The last leg of his ride was crowded and smelly with people baking in the midwestern heat. He barely slept on the train, and his irritability had been spiking.

None of it was helped by the fact he’d soon be confronted by his father.

The story that Dean had spun to convince his father he needed to come home wasn’t convoluted. He and Cas had decided simple was best since that way there wasn’t much to remember and skirt around, inadvertently letting something slip.

So, when Dean called home (called the store, told Smith, Smith told his father, his father called back from the store), he merely said that he fell “ill” with a late-winter cold and the “doctor told me to bedrest, out of the stresses of the city if possible.”

Really, the truth was that despite the lack of jobs for Dean, his health, and the need to be circumspect out in the open with Cas—New York was good to him, and he hardly had to see the doctor. He never pegged himself as a city man, but if it was what worked, then he was content in staying however long Cas needed to stay.

His father hadn’t asked any other questions, didn’t seem to really care, and agreed to pick Dean up. Dean was surprised his father still had the truck.

As Dean disembarked from the train, he dragged his feet walking into the station, letting the crowd around him shuffle in first. It felt like a march right into the arms of Death: the death of his happiness he had worked so hard to gain, the death of the new life he and Cas had built together, and the death of who he had allowed himself to be over the last three years.

Back into the life he’d thought he’d burned.

Dean didn’t want to know how much it had changed.

When he entered the main part of the station, he saw John standing against the wall with his arms crossed, watching various people walk on by. He didn’t look happy, but Dean was relieved to see that at least he wasn’t swaying on the spot.

John turned and saw Dean approaching, and Dean’s brain screamed the word “Trapped!” at him.

“Let’s go,” John mumbled, taking one of Dean’s suitcases and already began walking to the exit. No other greeting, no, “Hello, son, very good to see you, I hope you’re well.” No embrace like other families were doing around them after being gone for some time.

Then again, Dean didn’t really expect anything anyway.

He kept his face as hard and unmoving as a stone, a look he had practiced on the train ride home, as he followed his father out of the station.

Inwardly, he was screaming.

The ride home took almost two hours with the truck, practically on its deathbed. They had bought the thing just before the stock market crashed and even then, it hadn’t been the most pristine vehicle. There was no money to buy a new one. Dean only prayed it got them home in one piece.

Thoughts went to when he and Cas had discussed buying a car after walking around the upper east side, seeing a glitzy ride that clearly belonged to someone who wasn’t strapped for cash.

“There’s no point in having a car here,” Cas had argued, but still kept his eyes on the car as it halted at an intersection.

“Yeah, but I mean—if we happen to move out of here, we’d need a car.”

Cas then turned his attention around to Dean, eyebrows high, but said nothing. After a moment of confusion, Dean replayed the sentence back in his head and felt the heat rise to his cheeks, looking away. At that time, their relationship had only been a year old. The statement itself was strange for him, never giving anyone he was seeing a sense of permanence and a future together, knowing that it’d never work out.

Cas said nothing, but did relax his face a little and gave a little smile. They spent the rest of the journey home talking about car models.

Dean now sat watching the brown Kansas landscape roll past him, replaying that moment in his head over and over, trying to draw on that confidence he didn’t realize he had at the time to know they would make it well into the future.

And how to have the confidence to keep believing it.

The farm in Pomona was a dusty, ramshackle place. The house was once considered nice, Dean assumed, but in the years they had lived there, at least since his mother died, John let the house go. The wood on the outside needed sanding, a fresh coat of paint needed to replace that yellowing-white that was peeling; the windows looked dirty on the outside from various dust storms; the shed had a rusted lock in place, indicating John hadn’t been in there in years; the barn looked just as bad as the house, and as John pulled onto the property, Dean saw no more hay inside, and no more—

“Where are the animals?” He asked, already guessing the answer. They hadn’t had a lot, but they had milking cows and chickens to at least give them some food and give some to Smith down at the store to sell.

“Gone,” his father grumbled, opening his door. He slid out of his seat, grabbing Dean’s case along with him, and slammed the door so hard, Dean thought it’d fall off.

Sitting in the truck, staring at the now empty barn and clutching his suitcase, the moment of clarity struck Dean again: He was alone.

And that wasn’t the worst of it, Dean decided. The worst thing was knowing that Cas was feeling the exact same way.

“Do you know where you are?” A doctor asks the soldier, checking his eyes again with a bright light, pulling at his eyelids.

“Hospital,” he says.

“Do you know where this hospital is?”

“Yes.”

“Where is this hospital located?”

The soldier sighs, frustrated, and looks away as the doctor leans back, hands on his lap and looking disappointed.

He knows where he is, that’s what he wanted to say. But, they keep asking specifically where and he can’t say _____. They ask him to write it down, but he can’t. He can barely write anything.

His name still eludes him.

They establish he is actually part of the U.S. Army, which he confirms once he hears the name of it, but can’t give his number or name. But he describes the camp he came from the best he can. Officials narrow it down to three different ports, snap his photo, and get to work.

Over the course of the week, things come back to his head—but not everything.

He remembers most things, but not all things: Where he was, but not where he came from; what his house looked like, but not where it was; that he most recently lived in a city, but not what it was called.

Everything comes so vividly to his mind, but what it was called doesn’t. And he knows there are other gaps in his memory, but right now he wants to know his name, where he lived—

And the man at the center of everything.

It is easy for the soldier to remember and understand that he was in a relationship with that man that stands out in all his memories and in his dreams—but the most frustrating thing was the soldier can’t place his name.

Over the days, the man’s face got clearer in the soldier’s head (as other memories of his life came back. Normal, said the doctors), but every time the soldier thought he had the man’s name, it died.

It is so hard loving someone he can’t say the name of.

Two nights later, and the soldier has one of the vivid dreams that have been visiting him almost every other night. They are the kinds of dreams that stick with him throughout the day, able to recall perfect details of the dream and paint the image perfectly in his mind.

The dream also takes place at night, but it doesn’t look like night time thanks to a full, bright moon above. He is on a _______, and despite the cooler breeze coming off the water, the sand still retains its warmth from the day. Under his head is a pillow fashioned out of the clothing he wore that day, leaving him bare and exposed in the night air.

And he isn’t the only one.

Next to him, on a sheet laid out over the sand, is a man. It is the same one that has followed the soldier into almost every dream so far and into his waking hours; it is the man that the soldier loves but can’t name.

His face is clearer to the soldier now—the clearest it has been. The man’s eyes are closed while he sleeps but the slight downturn of his mouth, the relaxed features, the reflection of the moonlight all burn into the soldier’s memory. A wash of sadness suddenly fills him, wishing somewhere there was an indication of the man’s name.

But there is nothing. They are on a _____ with only a sheet, clothes and a bag.

Sitting up fully, the soldier looks around them for signs of civilization. There are no houses, or ______ or even a boat. The strip of ______ they are on seems isolated from the ground above them by a tall sand dune, and all the soldier can hear are the sounds of waves and crickets. They are alone.

“Cas?”

The soldier turns, startled at the sudden voice from behind him. It is the first time the soldier has heard the man speak.

“Cas?’ The soldier repeats, confused.

“Yeah—what’s going on? Is someone coming?” The man asks, frowning. He opens his eyes, and stares back at—

Like a speeding bullet, the memory of the night comes back to the soldier in an instant.

He wakes in his hospital bed, breathing hard, automatically closing his eyes again and pressing the heels of his hands into them.

Cas is his name. Part of his name. He knows it was longer, but he also knows that Cas was in there somewhere. It rings familiar in his head, and like ghosts of voices around him, he hears people speaking to him with that name. Old memories.

_Cas, get down from the tree._

_Cas, did you get the paper?_

_Cas, what did you get on the test?_

_Cas, are you asking what I think you’re asking?_

_Cas, what is it? What’s in the envelope?_

Sighing, Cas takes the pad and pen on the little table next to him, and writes it down how he remembers it: Cas.

He repeats it, then again, then again—trying to get his hand to write it steady and hoping it will remember the rest of the name as well.

As he writes, Cas’s mind drifts back to the dream on the beach. He and the man had gotten out of that city they lived in and traveled on a _____ to ______, just to escape the heat. The ______ was sheltered from the land around them, and they chose it for the lack of people around. They spent the day in the water, then heading into ______ for some food, before settling down in the evening and watching the sunset off to their left. Under the cover of darkness, they stripped themselves of any remaining clothing from the day, and the man climbed on top of Cas. They rode out their pleasure together and only took a short break before doing it again. Cas remembers them emboldened by the fact that, regardless of their isolation from the mainland, they could be caught at any time.

The night lasted as long as they needed it to, their heated skin covered in _____ with the cooling breeze from the water off of _____. Sound behind them—

Cas swallows hard as he moves his pen down to the next line on the paper and writes:

Sound

Water

City

Left


	4. Chapter 4

**CHAPTER FOUR**

At half past nine, Dean finally hears his father’s footsteps up the stairs and sees his shadowy figure from down the hall. There’s a long yawn, a pause, and then the banging of a door down the hallway. The one benefit of the house is that John is situated at the exact opposite end of Dean, providing him some cover.

His windows are open and the sound of crickets and other night time creatures drift in on the cooler breeze. Breathing is easier, and Dean feels like he isn’t being suffocated in a hat box anymore; he is considering adopting a night owl sleep schedule.

Content that his father has slipped into a deep sleep, Dean slides off his bed and heads to his door. He swings it closed fast, halting right before the door frame, to avoid the squeaky hinges. Gently swinging the latch into place, Dean presses an ear against the door to make sure John is still in his room. He doesn’t expect John to break down the door out of curiosity at this hour, but one can never be too careful.

Especially with what Dean is about to do.

Dean makes his way over to his closet. He swings the door open as fast as he closed his bedroom door, making a note in the back of his mind to grease the hinges tomorrow.

Behind his shirts, jeans, shoes, and some boxes of childhood things, sits a seam in the wall. It outlines the area where his father sealed off a crawl space into the abandoned attic, grumbling about a cold draft. Growing up, Dean had stashed numerous things in there once he opened it back up, including nudie mags, booze, cigarettes, and the pages of a short-lived diary he had when he first realized that maybe he would enjoy accompanying another man in bed.

Now, the space holds a small box with over a hundred letters from Cas, written to him over the course of the year, sometimes sending four or five at once, almost like diary entries. It was the only way they could stay sane.

Though now, Dean figures it doesn’t matter too much.

He takes his knife once more and wedges it in between the wall and the paneling. Pushing the blade in as much as he can, Dean then wiggles it to loosen the panel. He winces as the wood squeaks as it rubs against the wood from the wall, but it isn’t as loud as he feared it would be. Holding his breath, Dean keeps his free hand out to catch the wood before it drops to the floor.

Revealed is the box Dean held the stacks of letters in, waiting for him to dive his hand in and relive the memories of the last year.

A rock lodges itself into Dean’s throat as he pulls out one of the stacks, running his fingers over the rough paper and twine. The guilt that came with Cas’s latest letter, still tucked into the mattress, comes flooding back.

In his hand, Dean holds all the attempts they both gave at preserving what they built together over the years, the attempt at holding themselves together despite the miles between them.

Somewhere in the stacks is the last letter Cas sent, believing that everything was still okay and that Dean hadn’t—

Swallowing hard, Dean unties the stack in his hand and flips through them to see where Cas dated them from.

Realizing he has to go through all of the stacks, he picks up the box with a sigh and stands up in the closet. He feels his heart stutter with the sudden movement and he grips the door frame with his hand, closing his eyes, waiting for the sensation to pass.

As Dean eventually makes his way over to his bed, he remembers that somewhere in the stacks is a letter where Cas had explained a method Dean could use while back on the farm to make sure his health didn’t decline with the stresses of his father and just the midwest in general.

The letter is somewhere in the pile, but Dean remembers it word for word, and always thinks about it when he feels he really has to calm down:

Try to focus on something completely different than what you were doing at that moment, Cas’s letter had said. Breathe deep, in and out, and don’t let your concentration waver. Some of the men here have been seeing nurses in the area, and the girls say they see shell-shocked soldiers with their nerves permanently rattled. It’s not the same as your own complication, but the effect is similar. This is how they get them to calm down (short of a sedative).

Dean now wishes he just had a sedative.

The breeze coming through the window has turned chilly, and a shiver runs through Dean as he sits against his cold pillow. He doesn’t dare shut the windows yet though, not until the letters are put away. The heavy windows make a loud noise when shut and his father isn’t a heavy sleeper.

Several minutes after sifting through the letters, trying not to focus on their substance, he comes across the one he is looking for.

It was sent during Cas’s last week of basic training in New Jersey, and the first one to really strike a sense of complete and raw sadness in Dean.

_Dear D,_

_Remember the first letter I sent when I got here? I mentioned that I already missed your cooking and I wrote that letter on the first day I was here?_

_Well I still miss it, sometimes almost too much. I keep remembering the first dinner we took at that dingy bar. The food was good, and I remembered remarking how much I liked my meal, only for you to scoff and suggest you could do better. Do you remember what I said after?_

“Put your money where your mouth is,” Dean mumbles to himself.

_I think I became addicted within too short of a time. You had me hooked. Not to say that I don’t love you for you, of course, and that’s why I put up with you—_

Dean smiles, but feels the tears already starting again.

_—but if it was between you and your meatloaf… I can’t say what I’d do. It’s horrifying what these people do to chickens, knowing how expensive they are to the general population. It needs your flair, and if we didn’t need food to live, I would push away every plate they gave me._

_All of this is a long way of saying I am being shipped out in two days. Dorset, England is my new destination, Weymouth and Portland Harbor...HarbOUR to be more specific. If the food is bad here, I can’t imagine what it’ll be like there. Pray for my stomach and my muscle mass. If I were you, I’d get started on plans for our own little “victory garden” when I get back. I will need that boost in nutrition if you ever expect me to perform in bed again._

_I can’t say I’m excited about going to England, not as much as these other boys. I feel like maybe I’m the least patriotic out of everyone, but my hesitation isn’t because I don’t want to fight for what’s right and defend the good guys—but I don’t want to be that far away from you. Right now, I’m at least in the same country. Am I selfish because I’m putting us before a war? Maybe. I know Michael would say that, and your father as well, and maybe everyone else in camp, but I am beyond the point of caring. Once upon a time I did dream about being a soldier like everyone else in my family. We have been here since the Revolutionary War. Fighting is in my DNA. That drive left me when I started college, and I can’t seem to pick it up again._

_But I can’t begin to describe to you how much dread I felt when I saw I’d be heading across the ocean. The fight in me is gone, if it was ever truly there to begin with. Let me stay here and do my due diligence as a U.S. citizen. I just can’t care anymore. We’ve only been apart for six weeks, but six weeks may as well be six years. Or six decades._

_It’s not going to be easy, and our letter correspondence will have a longer wait time. But know that every chance I get, I’m going to be writing you. It’s going to be the only way I keep my sanity over there. I heard they make bland pies with vegetables that taste like rubber, and it’s always cold. Apparently the temperature at my next destination doesn’t even get to 70 degrees in the peak of summer._

_Maybe you can knit me a sweater._

_My next letter will be sent from the lovely and cold Weymouth, England—I hope it warms in your hands (and those photos will hopefully keep me plenty warm)._

_Love, Cas_

Dean’s watery eyes finish reading the letter, and then moves back up to the destination Cas mentioned.

Weymouth.

He was right after all.

_Just because he was there doesn’t mean he went to France._

_If he went to France, you don’t know the death toll. There were no specifics. He could be fine._

Dean knows what his brain is trying to do, seeing the incoming onslaught of doom and gloom thoughts while remembering what the article said.

He doesn’t fight the positivity trying to come back at him; he doesn’t think he could take any more grief.

A small, snide voice pipes up in the back of Dean’s mind as he scoops the letters back up. Part of him toys with the idea to re-read some of them, get the happy thoughts rolling again. But the voice reminds Dean that he lost that right. There is no more happiness to be had with the letters or with Cas.

He has express orders to move on.

**June 9th, 1943**

**Pomona, Kansas**

The second night Dean returned back to the farm, he decided to write his own letter, wanting to mail things out as soon as Cas’s mail code arrived.

The previous night was quiet, mostly consisting of him unpacking what little belongings he had while his father stayed downstairs and read the day-old newspaper Smith brought earlier in the day. Dean didn’t venture downstairs until he heard his father go to bed. The less interaction with him now, the better.

It still didn’t feel real that he was back after spending so much time planning to get away. A dull hum of stress had already begun to weave itself throughout Dean’s body, and if it got worse while only one day back, then it wouldn’t do him any favors, health-wise.

There was one thing that Dean realized would work in his favor.

Growing up, he and Sam would take the walk into downtown every three days to get their mail or to drop off some eggs and milk. It was his job back then and it would continue to be. After the incident, the doctors always told John it was vital that Dean still maintain an active lifestyle, to walk every day if he could. And Dean still walked around New York almost every day.

So he convinced his father to keep letting him do it once they got back.

“Smithy brings the mail now,” John first responded with, frowning.

“Well, he can save on the gas then,” Dean continued, hoping he didn’t have to do a song and dance to get this. “I need to stay moving, doctor’s orders both here and back east. You don’t want me keeling over out in the middle of nowhere do you?”

John said nothing but shook his head slightly. Dean took that as a yes.

Dean had full access to their PO Box now, and he and Cas could exchange their letters discreetly.

By the afternoon on Dean’s second day back, John took the truck “into town” and Dean knew that meant “to Rudy’s”. There was a high chance he wouldn’t return that night, taking up one of the beds attached to the roadhouse.

Better for Dean, who all day grew more and more anxious as life on the farm ceased to have anything that occupied his mind.

He briefly thought if he should have gone to Rudy’s as well, see his friends if the government hadn’t scooped them up yet. But it was still too soon. Dean wanted to do things, but didn’t want to be around people. He wanted alcohol, but also didn’t feel like making the effort to go into town to get it.

Ever since he left New York Dean had been mulling around in his head as to what his first letter should say. There was the desire to pour everything into it, even though they’d only been apart for 72 hours, but another part of him said to keep it calm and steady, that Cas didn’t need to read abject panic in the first letter addressed to him. It’d only make him feel worse.

Dean’s default position for his life up until meeting Cas was holding back. No one wanted to see a man cry, no one wanted to hear a man pour his heart and soul out for someone to hear—no one wanted that. Sometimes Dean still fell back on that habit, and wanted to now. He wasn’t a letter writer, and his diary in grade school only lasted six months before he got bored and burned it before his father found it.

How the hell does he say everything that’s on his mind and fit it onto a sheet of paper?

Sitting at his desk, Dean tapped the pen against his mouth, staring at the blank page, thinking.

There was another aspect to all this that he kept forgetting: he had to disguise the fact that it was actually a man writing to Cas. Benny had a brother who served, and he said the mail did get checked, mostly outgoing back home, to make sure people weren’t speaking in coded messages.

Dean smirked as he now tapped the pen against the desk, still staring at the page. They were technically going to be speaking in some type of code.

Stalling for another minute, Dean glanced over to his bed, just to look at something else, and saw his suitcase tucked under the frame.

It was then he remembered the miniature photos, two dozen of them, tucked away in a hidden pocket.

Taking a deep breath, he slid from his chair and onto his knees, grabbing the case and pulling it gently out from its resting place.

He had meant to put the pictures away in the crawl space his father tried blocking off years ago. It took effort to open the wood paneling, making it more secure than a suitcase.

_As soon as you’re done—_

Dean ran his fingers across the inside fabric of the case, against the edges, waiting to feel a slight bump. When his fingers finally hit it, he smiled, and tore at the fabric slightly to make an opening.

The most recent photos were taken and developed only three days prior, but the rest were taken over the course of nearly a year. Dean didn’t think they’d be able to get them small enough for him to discreetly go home with them, but Cal Thayzar, the weird nutter who owned the shop, said he was a “magic man” before presenting the photos for them the following morning.

He had some choice words about what they contained, but that was why they went to him. Cal was the only one who wouldn’t spill the beans, rat them out, turn them over to the fuzz. He made his best business by developing not-so-tasteful photos for people in the area, most of who preferred the same sex.

And Cal didn’t lie—the photos fit perfectly into the palm of his hand with how small they got. They were easy storage, and Dean reminded himself to one day give Cal something worth his trouble.

Taking the photos, Dean eased back onto his chair, careful not to creak the wood. The photos spilled out from his hand, and he laid them out over the paper.

The first one Dean’s eye caught was only from Saturday morning, but it already felt a lifetime away. Heat rose to his cheeks as he picked it up and brought it close to his face. It was when Cas grabbed the brownie and snapped the first photo of the morning. Dean’s eyes were closed in concentration, and his mouth full. Despite the many photos Cas had taken of their exploits over the months, it still gave Dean a shock seeing himself like that.

Enjoying himself.

His eyes wandered the small surface of the photo, taking in every black-and-white detail he could. After a moment, concentrating, he could almost place himself right back to where he was, and the fullness he felt all the way to his throat.

Dean swallowed hard, and put the photo down before he fixated on it for the rest of the night. His eyes wandered to another one.

The second one was taken on Dean’s birthday. He remembered that they wound each other up so much at the party at Dorothy’s, that they couldn’t wait to get all their clothing off before Cas perched himself between Dean’s legs with a silly, slightly drunk grin on his face. Dean reached for the camera at that point, wanting to capture the expression. Cas in an instant went from looney to determined as someone eager to get to their prize.

The intense stare of Cas into the camera ran a shiver throughout Dean, like he was still there. A familiar warm began to pool in the center of Dean as he fidgeted in his seat.

The third photograph threw him off guard. He hadn’t seen it before.

Dean couldn’t tell when Cas captured it, other than that it was at night, and Dean was sleeping. The sheets were pushed down, indicating it was taken during one of the warmer months, and he was fully alight with what must have been the desk lamp. It was strange seeing himself look so… soft.

As Dean took in the scene before him, he suddenly wished he could go back in time to whenever it was taken so he knew to wake up and draw Cas back to bed.

The fourth photo he picked up finally pushed him to start writing.

It was one of the last photos they took before they took the film to Cal. The memory was still so fresh, only being three days ago, that Dean could still feel the pressure of Cas’s hands grabbing him.

The picture was taken from behind, Dean face down and his arms under the pillow that his head rested on. He had his face turned to the side; eyes closed but not tight, mouth open but not out of shock, hair pushed up against the pillow to further highlight the bedhead—the expression was pure bliss. The angle of the photo showed Cas pushed up against him, in him, his backside flushed without a centimeter to spare.

It was right before Cas covered Dean and pushed him into the mattress

their mattress

and they moved slow and easy, rocking against the sheets and a thick, impenetrable bubble of silence surrounding them.

But, along with the growing heat inside Dean while looking at the photo, came the bitter taste of sadness. It was one of the last times they had together, and Dean couldn’t get those horrible images out of his head, or panicking that Cas would leave and he’d never see—

Dean blinked himself back into focus, back to the present moment, and placed the photo back down on the desk. Each one of them was apt to cause some sort of grief.

Sighing, he gathered them back up, and moved the stack off to the side of his desk. Dean picked up the pen, and with one last glance to the photos, began writing:

_June 9th, 1943,_

_Dear Cas,_

_It’s currently just after nine here. I technically have only been home for a day, and I’m already gearing up to march on Washington and give Roosevelt a piece of my mind. He’s in a wheelchair and I can’t overexert myself, but I’ll still kick his ass until he calls this shit show off. The next option is having someone knock me out until you’re ready to come back, but then I can’t write you or get your letters. Maybe that’s a bad option._

_I told you before we left that I wasn’t good at writing letters. I thought maybe once I sat down it’d all come to me, but I don’t know how to say everything I want. There’s the option of writing everything down, but I’d run out of paper and it’s such a hassle to get more out here. I’m a well-read_

he almost wrote man

_person, but I don’t have the same vocabulary as your fancy upper class Connecticut education gave you, so can you give me some words I can use to accurately describe how much I miss you?_

_Before I got to writing this, I pulled out the photos. I only got to the fourth one before I lost it, so congratulations on your masterful photography skill. Now I’m sitting in my room, my face is hot and I’m growing to unbelievable levels of frustration. I can’t go to sleep like this. I guess I’m lucky that my father booked it for the night._

Dean paused, tapping his pen against his lips again and reading back over his words, making sure nothing was a dead giveaway. His eyes slid back over to the photos, the one of him face down, ass up on full display at the top of the pile.

It was cruel and unusual punishment that he had no one here now to replicate that position and feeling.

Sighing, miserable, Dean went back to the letter:

_I’m not exaggerating when I say that when you come back, I’m going to let you do anything you want to me. Sorry if anyone is reading over your shoulder right now, but it had to be said. If every night without you feels like this, then we will have a lot of ground to cover when you get back. And you better come back, sunshine, because you can’t let me build up like this and then never pull the trigger. I will literally explode, go to Heaven, hunt you down myself, and demand you bend me over right in front of God if you have to._

Dean bit the end of his pen, his breathing growing shallower and faster. He was suddenly very happy that they had stopped going to church when he was a little boy. The thought of going to next Sunday’s mass and having Jesus stare down at him with contempt would saddle him with too much guilt.

But Dean did feel a small smile on his face as he reread what he wrote, imagining just how long they’d stay in heaven should Cas bend Dean over one of those fancy clouds and have at it, right in front of God himself.

He frowned at the motility mention, but decided to leave it in. They didn’t have in-depth conversations on the likelihood that Cas would not return from the war, but side stepped it with small, dark jokes here and there. It acknowledged the situation without dwelling on the pain.

Feeling a sudden surge of tears approaching, Dean inhaled deep to hold them back. He had cried too much in the past several days, and lord knew if he had to survive however long in this dog heap, he had to toughen it up.

_As I’m writing this, I have no clue where my father went. My brother is gone, and the animals are gone too, sold for drinking or gambling money. I don’t know. We weren’t much of a crop growing family, but at least my father made an attempt at a “victory garden”. Strange and dumb name. Do you think if I throw a tomato at the German man with the Charlie Chaplin mustache, we’ll be victorious? Has anyone given it a try? Ask around for me._

_I should go to bed and have no idea how to round this letter out. I also have no idea how I’m supposed to live here day in and day out. Who knows, I may just break loose again and you’ll find me in Chicago. If that happens, I’ll let you know._

_My hands are no match against you,_

_Love, D_

Dean lifted the letter to the light, and re-read it five or six times, making sure that any prying eyes couldn’t discern the fact that all those words came from a man.

Satisfied, he folded the paper up and slipped it into one of the envelopes he had brought back from New York. He knew he’d eventually run out of those, and paper. Dean made a note in the back of his head to ask Lee if he still had his truck and if he’d loan it to Dean to take to the city and get some more supplies.

He stuffed the letter under his mattress to take with him the next day to the post office and paused to listen if his father returned home while Dean was lost in concentration.

The house remained quiet, barring a groan from the wooden walls when a stronger breeze whizzed by.

He was alone.

On June 15th, Dean received his first three letters from Cas, and it felt like Christmas morning.

Dean should have started his walk that morning earlier than he did. As the sun rose, and his shoes kicked a rock down the dirt road, the sun beat down on him, surrounding him in a cloud of humidity as well.

He needed exertion, and he’d had worse than this before, but the misery stacked on top of the misery Dean already had building in the past week. His t-shirt stuck to his back, and his jeans felt like they were trapping him in an oven. Dean only envisioned finally getting home, and taking the coldest bath he could manage.

When Dean got back, he still had chores for the day. John had come home three days ago, slept for a day, and then woke up with a laundry list of things Dean should have done while John was away.

The number one priority was the barn, with John somehow under the impression that they’d get their animals back. It would take probably a year if Dean did it all on his own, but he didn’t expect his father’s help, and truth be told…

What else was Dean supposed to do for a year?

He took the list with a short nod and a mumbled “yes sir” before stuffing it in his back pocket. He wondered if the words were still there, or if they melted.

Thinking about spending his days in the barn, fixing it up on his own and staying away from his father and that gloomy house, was fine with Dean. But on days like today, he couldn’t. His heart wouldn’t stand it, and even John would understand that. But, that meant Dean had to spend another afternoon inside, or outside in the shade, doing nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

An hour later, Dean arrived at the post office. He opened their PO Box with a little hum of excitement when he saw a thicker envelope, clearly with more than one piece of paper in it, through the small window.

He grabbed all the envelopes inside, not pausing to stop and say hello to anyone, and nearly ran back outside into the late-spring heat.

Shuffling through the other pieces of mail, Dean finally got to the ones he had been waiting for: D. Winchester, 1509 Delaware Road, Pomona, Kansas, 66076.

It took all his willpower not to sprint home.

John was passed out on the couch by the time Dean arrived home. The half-eaten lunch still sat on the table, and Dean resisted the urge to yell in frustration. For all the food they didn’t have, his father sure liked to waste it.

Dean deposited the mail into the basket next to the front door, and toed off his shoes, trying hard not to so much as breathe too hard. The envelope was too big to roll up and stick in his pocket, and he had to hold it the whole time instead of stuffing it into his jeans. The heat was too much and would wear the paper down in an instant.

On his way over to the stairs, glancing back at John, he stopped at the kitchen table and grabbed the second half of the sandwich laying on the plate untouched.

Drawing his curtains, trying to keep his room cooler, Dean sat on his floor, shedding his pants to feel the coolness of the wood on his skin.

Part of him said to wait; wait until night time, wait until his father wasn’t in a half-sleep downstairs, wait until he calmed down a little from his hike—

But the louder part, the part Dean wound up listening to, told him to go for it. It had been over a week, and he was desperate for something.

He made sure not to rip the envelope up completely, wanting to preserve it to keep the letters in. But, Dean did wiggle a finger into an opening and pulled at the crease until the envelope gave him what he’d wanted for so long.

There were three letters inside, all folded evenly and waiting to be picked up.

Heart pounding, but not to the level of concern, Dean pulled all three out, and glanced at the dates, sorting them in order.

_June 7th, 1943_

_New Jersey_

_Dear D,_

_It’s been one day and I’m counting down the time until I can leave. It’s an impossible thing to do since the war has no set end date, but wouldn’t it be amazing if it did?_

_If there was ever a time I wished you didn’t see me, it’s right now. They shaved our heads when we got here and suffice to say I look like an idiot. Never let me cut my hair when I get back. I never realized how much my looks relied on having a full head of hair, but it did and now I found that out the hard way. Does that sound conceited? It’s supposed to help build ‘camaraderie’ around here with your platoon: You all look like idiots, so you’re all on the same idiotic level of idiocy. I don’t see why we had to get rid of our hair to learn that. Couldn’t they just shout it at us instead? I’m thinking about this too much._

_I’m also missing your cooking. It’s horrible here what they do to chickens. I think you’d be personally offended so I won’t into too many specifics. It’s stressful enough right now. I had been thinking though, even if you’re not allowed to join a combat troop, maybe you can apply as a cook and follow me and my new combat friends around to cook us dinner. I don’t think the government understands just how much we need proper nutrition to stay focused. They should ask me. I’m sort of a doctor._

_I miss you, obviously, most of all. I’m writing this before I settle into my new bed. It’s small, narrow, and the mattress is thinner than the paper I’m writing this on. The sheets are scratchy and there’s a draft in these dorms. I’m cold even though it’s June and have no reason to be. It will be the first night sleeping apart since I had to take my trip home a year ago, and while I know you won’t, I hope that you are still able to get some rest._

_Also, as I’m writing this, I’m realizing this is the first night since that trip that we will be going to sleep without wearing ourselves out to near exhaustion._

_How’s that for unfair?_

_Missing your thighs,_

_Love, Cas_

Dean sighed, once again trying to keep the sudden onslaught of emotions at bay. He instead tried conjuring up the image of Cas with no hair, looking horrified in the mirror and suddenly glad that Dean wasn’t around to see him.

That brought a small smile to Dean’s face, and he picked up the second letter.

_June 8th, 1943_

_Horrible, horrible New Jersey_

_There’s a boy here. He says he’s 18 but he looks twelve. His name is Garth Fitzgerald and if the wind blew any stronger out here, I’m afraid he’d be blown away. It’s amazing who gets drafted when there’s desperation. They’ll happily take the twig who probably weighs less than his rifle._

_It’s humid here, but it’s not like the city. I don’t know if you know this, but New Jersey smells. I don’t know why, but it does, and I dislike it. They told me that it gets worse the hotter it gets. Apparently there’s a dump just down the road. I’m two seconds away from marching on out of here and straight to Canada._

_Not much happened today. Our physical was yesterday and after you get the green light, they shove a uniform in your arms, show you how to make a bed, and shout the rules of the place at you. There’s a lot of shouting._

_Today we woke up, as you would say it, at the ass-crack of dawn just to crawl around in the mud and do sprints. We were then issued our rifles and had target practice. I’m lucky enough to have had brothers to teach me how to shoot to save me the embarrassment of missing every shot like some of these men._

_There’s supposed to be six weeks of this, and I’m torn between wanting it to speed up so I can get it over with, but also slowing it down because I don’t know where they’ll put me, and there’s already enough miles between us._

_It’s a rumor, but one of the men said his brother requested where to go, and he was allowed to stay at a base in the country. I’m currently trying to figure out how to do that._

_I didn’t sleep well last night, and I don’t think you did either. See my other letter re: wearing ourselves out. It’s not easy to even take care of it yourself around here, unless you want a bunch of men watching you._

_Praying the war ends tomorrow,_

_Love, Cas_

Dean frowned, rereading the line about Cas and shooting. He knew that Cas’s brothers had been part of the army, but it was still hard picturing Cas on the ground, one eye closed, pointing the barrel of a gun at something. When Dean had asked Cas if he wanted to go upstate to a turkey shoot for Thanksgiving, Cas had declined, uncomfortable with guns.

How much did they browbeat marksmanship into Cas back home?

Dean pursed his lips and set aside the second letter. When his eyes returned to the last piece of paper in his hand, his stomach jumped, that familiar, internal pool of heat beginning to stir. Despite the stuffy room and June heat, Dean felt a run of goosebumps over his skin.

The handwriting was far from Cas’s normally elegant, loopy cursive. It tried to be that in some parts, but in others it was a hastily written normal print, sometimes trailing off on a slant, indicating whoever was writing wasn’t paying enough attention to keep everything straight. It was written in a rush for sure. It had no paragraphs, no breaks—it was a solid block of handwritten text, and Dean could almost feel the frenetic energy emitting from the paper.

It was written on the same day as the second one, but clearly something had happened between that letter and this one:

_June 8_

_I’m writing this in the middle of the night in the bathroom via flashlight. Everyone else is asleep but I cant our routine has screwed us, D, and I’m trying to stay as quiet as possible. I want you next to me, I want you naked in the sheets, and not these shitty ones. I want our bed, I want our room, I want you in our bed in our room I want you looking at me and gasping my name. I can honestly to God hear it in my ears right now. I don’t think you understand what that actually does to me when you do that. I want everything I want you. I want you and everything with you and inside you and your face to make that face it does. Remember the photos? There’s one I regret so damn much not taking with me Im practically hitting myself right now. Youre face down head turned to the side and even without it in front of me I can hear what noise you were making and I had barely gotten started. Its ridiculous to think about but it’s stuck in my head and laying in bed tonight it wouldn’t leave me alone. You didn’t know I took that photo, and I hope you find it in your stash soon. I’m sorry if this is too much in one letter. I’m going to address the envelope first thing tomorrow before I change my mind I need to stop writing now. My hands are no substitute for yours or your mouth but it’s best I can do before going back out into the dorms Love Cas_

Dean realized he had been holding onto the letter too tight, and his fingers were wrinkling the paper. His focus faded away and he was staring at the words with little comprehension anymore. With his ears ringing, Dean also heard his heart kicking up at the contents of the letter.

He stayed sitting on the floor, bare legs out in front of him with his free hand itching to relocate into his boxers and take care of the business Cas had started on his end.

As Dean finally trusted himself to at least move to lower the letter onto the floor, he heard his father cough downstairs before loud snoring took its place. The cough was enough to douse some of the flames racing through Dean’s veins, and he squeezed his eyes closed, trying to will it all away. He couldn’t be sitting up in his room, half dressed with a woody and letters from a guy next to him if his father decided to come up and ask for something, which wasn’t out of the realm of possibility.

Dean tried his usual tricks: garbage day on an August afternoon, the rats in the subway, the old lady with her skirt caught in her underwear and flashing half the boardwalk—

—which soon morphed into Dean leaning against the rail of the boardwalk, further down where people couldn’t see him, while he watched the water from the bay rolling in. The rolling movement soon turned into him rolling back his hips, hitting something solid behind him. Hands slid around him and grabbed the button and fly of his jeans, working them open while a mouth found its way to the sensitive side of Dean’s neck. He tilted his head back and let that mouth do whatever it wanted while the hands finally gained access to—

Dean’s eyes flew open and he scrambled to get up from his spot on the seat. None of it was going to work.

It wasn’t like he didn’t toss one out while he lived at home, but he had to always wait for John to leave the house, or, back when they had a working radio, it was loud enough to drown out any noises that slipped out. Dean also made sure Sam was out of the picture or asleep (the kid slept like the dead).

Never—not once—did Dean attempt to get off while anyone could hear him or was near him.

The worst thing would have to be staying quiet.

Three years had spoiled him. He and Cas had lived in a corner apartment and their bedroom shared no walls. Even if it had, the building was full of familiars, all stacked on top of each other in a cocoon of protection from society and the law. The landlady, a sixty-something by the name of Miss Dorothy, saw to their comfort and safety.

But Miss Dorothy was now over a thousand miles away and there was no one to protect him or make him comfortable.

Dean stood, legs a little shaky. He glanced at his bed, wanting to sink down into it and take care of business as fast as possible, but then he had a wild thought.

His energy matched Cas’s, so it was only fair that Dean write a letter back with that same level of desperate need.

Sliding onto his chair, he winced a little at his sensitivity. He just wanted to take care of it fast, but he owed Cas this much for sending him such a wonderful letter.

It almost felt like Cas was there in the room with him.

Summoning his strength, Dean sighed deeply and picked up his pen:

_June 13th, 1943_

_Dear Cas_

_I’m not sure what you’re talking about, that last letter was an absolute treat. We’re in sync, even a thousand and so miles away from each other, because the other night I saw the very same picture you were speaking of. I will tell you here and now that it is_ quite _nice to look at. Shame, shame, shame you can’t see it. Shame._

_I’ll have you know right now, even if my handwriting isn’t as hectic as yours, that I am having to force myself to relax otherwise I will snap this pen in my hand._

_My father is currently downstairs, asleep, and usually that’s a sign to not even look in the direction of a self-made good time, but, say la vee. Is that how you spell it? Who cares. I don’t care. At least you can be sure that I have just as much privacy as you right now, and what’s worse, it’s just half past noon. I don’t even have the cover of darkness. Beat that._

_Here’s what I’ll be thinking of once I put this letter into its envelope and get over to the mattress:_

_I want you to take me. Remember Coney Island two years ago? I want that. I want that danger and I want you to give it to me. Whatever you imagined while writing this, and after, I want it, and I want it hard, and rough, and who gives a shit about any risks._

_I was thinking the other day that some women have those vibrating machines meant for something else, but they use them on themselves. I’m thinking I should save up whatever pennies I have and get one. It won’t be the same, but I’m all for trying new things that’ll get me as close as I can get to the real deal._

Dean had to pause, closing his eyes. The day on Coney Island was coming back to him, full force: how the ocean smelt, how the breeze felt, how they could hear voices and laughter but no one could see them, how Cas’s hands felt and what it was like being exposed so open and out in public. They had spent so much of their relationship at that point inside, being discreet. The adventure was a thrill and Dean wished he could do it again and again and again—

Relenting, Dean snuck a hand under his waistband and palmed himself. He couldn’t wait any longer. With his other hand, he grabbed the pen and got back to writing before he finished himself off at his desk:

_I’m telling you at this moment that when you come back, we aren’t waiting. I’ll meet you at Grand Central or the seaport or Lagwardia and demand in front of a thousand people that you turn me around and bend me over a counter or a luggage trolley or whatever the hell, I don’t care but you can’t expect me to wait until we get back home._

Dean’s handwriting started to get sloppy—

_All you have to do is hike up my skirt—_

Dean snorted, still moving his hand against himself, keeping one ear open to any movement downstairs.

_—and pull me in. I’ll already be ready, all we’d be waiting for is you. All you have to do is move. This wont last long. by then we’d be frustrated as all hell and the faster the beter. I want to feel you everywhere and to hell with the people who would try and stop us becuse they just don’t get it do they?_

He was getting really sloppy with his spelling and words now but holy _shit_ he didn’t care as he spun up the imagery in his head.

_You said yu like it when I say yor name a certain way so Ill also tell you a secret, I want you to pin me down and hold me until your done with me. Don’t let me go anywhere becase I don’t want to be out of your sight for even a second. Right in front of the rubes, I want you in me and not holding back._

Closing his eyes, Dean dropped the pen onto the desk and shoved a fist in his mouth to stifle a wayward moan that would have been the ballgame. Instead, it died and morphed into a shuttering gasp and Dean couldn’t keep himself still anymore. He took his hand out of his shorts and gripped the edge of his seat instead while picking up the pen again.

_That hole thing just got me up and razzed, sunshine, and if I’m going out in a briht lite, then yure going with me._

_Roger this_

_Love, D_

The letter by the end was atrocious, just as crooked as Cass had been, maybe even worse since Dean attempted breaks between his paragraphs. The spelling was bad for one of the only people around who could actually read and write properly.

But shit, he didn’t care.

Dean scooted back in his chair, almost too fast and knocking it over, and dropped his shorts immediately, soon followed by his shirt. He kicked them over next to the bed should he need them quickly. About to slide into bed, Dean realized his door wasn’t locked.

He wrestled with the decision to secure the rusted thing in place, buying him extra time—or he could keep his wits about him and hear his father’s heavy footfalls coming up the stairs in time.

Dean gave it half a second of thought before deciding he didn’t care all that much. He instead turned to his bed and slid on top of the blanket. The roughness of the fabric slid over his already sensitive skin, too hot and too stimulated, and it made him shiver again.

Thought again moved off the current task and onto whether or not he should slip under his sheets, should he be interrupted.

That, he decided to do.

Dean kicked off the heavier blanket, watching it fall to the floor. He slipped under his cotton sheets and was thankful to find it wasn’t too hot under there. All he needed was his lower half covered.

Moving as if in a trance, Dean grabbed one of his two pillows, turned over onto his stomach, and rested his hips on it. The contact was an instant reward, and he squeezed his eyes shut while little bolts of lightning shot through him.

He rarely got off like this, usually content with a few quick strokes and boom, done.

But, the desire to make it last, to pretend that the scenario he just spelled out for Cas was happening, was too strong.

As he shifted on the pillow, putting his arms under his other one and resting his head at the edge of it, like in the pictures, Dean felt another deep moan try to escape. In an instant, he turned and pressed his mouth into the pillow, muffling the noise he couldn’t help. It came out strangled as he kept moving against the pillow under him, sliding over the fabric and giving Dean the closest thing he could get to a sexual experience.

Dean moved slowly at first, drawing out each and every sensation that he could. A minute ago, he wanted to come as fast as he could, but now that he laid there, Dean wanted to play the full fantasy out in his head:

Cas comes home through Grand Central and Dean stands by the information kiosk, watching as a massive crowd of people mingle around. He’s trying to disguise the fact that he’s hard as a rock, and waiting very impatiently. Cas comes through one of the track exits, still in fatigues and armed only with a canvas duffle bag. He sees Dean almost immediately, and heads over there at once. Cas grabs Dean, and pulls him up the stairs, overlooking the masses below—they don’t pay attention to them. They don’t pay attention when Dean places his hands on the stone banister; they don’t pay attention when Cas drops his bag, using both hands to grasp at Dean’s button and fly; they don’t pay attention when Dean angles himself out more as Cas slides the jeans and briefs down; they don’t pay attention when, in one breath, Cas slides into Dean, without so much as a single word or noise or—

—Dean continued to move against the pillow, head down and breathing into the mattress, his efforts quickening. He swallowed another groan, and it came back out as another gasp for air—

—anything; they don’t pay attention when Cas begins to move, as easy as if they didn’t spend all this time apart. No one looks at them, no one cares. Dean’s bent over, watching the evening commuters, while getting fucked right there in the open. Over the roar of the crowd, the adrenaline—

was it his own adrenaline now? Here and now? Or was it the fantasy—

—he hears _yes, yes, yes please_ —fuck _fuck_ —

It’s the feeling all over again from the pier—the feeling of being caught and that they are the scourge of society. The feeling of danger in the face of overwhelming desire, and the feeling of someone who, for the first time in Dean’s life, cared to—

All at once, Dean grabbed the pillow by his head and pulled it over him, dousing himself in darkness and allowing him to let out the moan that had been building. It raised in pitch, sounding more like a whine, and Dean snapped his hips while white briefly flashed in front of his eyes.

It was over in a second, and Dean felt every muscle in his body liquify. He collapsed against the pillow under him, and with great effort, forced his arms to lift the pillow off from over his head.

Dean took a deep breath before turning onto his side and shoving the soiled pillow onto the ground next to his clothes and comforter. There, he stayed, closing his eyes while he listened to his heart dwindle back down to a normal rhythm.

He shouldn’t have done any of that.

Overexertion, by himself, in a hot room, while already having taken a two hour walk, was bad. Pushing himself to that limit was bad. Dean couldn’t place just how far he went, he wasn’t paying attention to it while wrapped up in his scenario—which was bad. Every time he had sex, be it Cas or some other girl, he had to always watch himself.

He had lost control.

Thoughts wandered to what Cas would have to say if Dean told him what just happened. Dean could practically see the face of disappointment and hear the disapproving way his name would be said. He’d be scolded for being stupid, but there wouldn’t be anger.

Dean imagined there would be anger if he accidentally killed himself while dry-humping a pillow in the middle of the afternoon with Cas on the other side of the country.

Closing his eyes, Dean’s thoughts began to drift as his heart steadied. Behind his shades, the sunlight faded thanks to a cloud.

He was never an imaginative person; that was Sam. The creativity in their family wasn’t there to begin with. Both of their parents were practical people, and while there were books and music, and his mother made sure they could read and write well, Dean didn’t have an active imagination.

But as he laid in bed, he would have sworn to anyone who bothered asking that he could still feel Cas in him, that the Grand Central scenario had felt as real as the scratchy surface of his sheets. The sensation had been burned into his mind and muscle memory, and now was the first time Dean realized it.

He had been so opposed to any of this before he left for New York, content on keeping his fantasies hidden away and blanching at the prospect of taking it up the ass, face down like a woman. Real men didn’t sleep with men was what he always told himself—that’s wrong. Fairy, Nancy, piece of shit--that’s what it was.

But he found that he was so, so happy to have been proven wrong.

As the heat inside him began to die down, a wave of quiet sadness filled the void. At this point, after a jostle in the sheets, Cas would be the one to draw up the sheets or blanket around them, or he’d be the one who would ask if Dean was feeling alright, or he’d be the one who would get up to get them both a glass of water—

But Cas wasn’t there. It was only Dean, in his small bed, his father downstairs, and now with only one pillow.

They move Cas to a room down the hall, a private one, with a window that overlooks a bright green pasture. The breeze is nice, and there is some sun that gets through as it sets for the day.

Cas likes the room, and finds it better than being in the emergency ward with crying soldiers with wounds a lot worse than his own. Not that he doesn’t have sympathy, but he just wants peace and quiet.

It’s a week after he gave soldiers that name, Cas, but they haven’t been able to narrow anything down. They still came up with over a thousand names. They gave him a map of camps where the troops were stationed along the southern coast of England. While he couldn’t say the name until someone else said it first, Cas was able to point to Weymouth accurately.

They moved their focus there.

The plan soon developed to give Cas a stack of books, seeing if reading would help jog his memory of certain words, or help his mouth actually say them instead of dying in his throat.

It’s all frustrating, but Cas doesn’t care if he ever remembers his full name again.

He just wants to know the man’s name. The one that Cas knows is waiting for him, somewhere, wherever they came from. As the days go on, the nerves begin to rattle in Cas, anxious to get back to ____ and to _____. He knows ______ was somewhere, waiting, and waiting with fear. He remembers some of the conversations that took place before Cas left _____. They spoke about the army, fighting, guns, and death. _____ was scared, and the more Cas sits in the hospital bed, the more restless he becomes to just take a ______ and find ______ himself.

But he can’t do that. So he continues to sit in his bed, waiting for the army to crack the case.

One of the books given iss one Cas has read over and over again, and he picked it first. It’ss a book he likes, but one the man likes more, dare Cas say it was the man’s favorite. There are strong memories associated with the book, even when Cas looks at the cover, and he hopes some kind of _something_ will be triggered by reading it.

One night, two and a half weeks since he was admitted, Cas sits upright in bed while the rest of the hospital sleeps. He always read A Farewell to Arms at night because his days were usually, _used to be_ , so busy back in ______ that sitting down to read during the day was cumbersome.

And on the nights he was too tired to read, he’d lay in bed while the man would read to him by lamp light. As Cas reads now, he can hear the man’s voice like he is right next to him in the hospital room.

It’s strange to hear a man so clearly and not place his name.

Cas glances at the clock on the wall across from him and sees the hour hand squarely on the 3. It is late, and the sun will rise soon, but he can’t put the book down.

Every word brings back a time and place when he read it: the beach, the pier, the _____ ride up to _______, in bed—

Cas sighs, turning a page. He wants that life back. It’s starting to physically hurt in his chest, and a few times while fighting back frustrated tears, he’s felt a tightness in his throat that’s made it hard to swallow or breathe.

His head is a mess, and that’s what pisses him off.

As Cas continues to read, his eyes grow heavy, and his concentration slips so he reads the same sentence three or four times.

At some point, he doesn’t know when, but at some point, he falls back against his pillows. The lamp next to him continues to omit its dim glow, and everything suddenly feels comfortably warm. It looks warm too. The sterile pale green walls are now a shade of golden yellow from the lamp, and the light casts long shadows of the bed frame and dresser against the wall across from Cas.

There’s someone next to him.

Turning over in bed, Cas watches him.

“Am I disrupting your sleep, princess?” The man asks, a smile on his face while his eyes track sentence after sentence. Cas isn’t sure when he began to doze off, but the warmth and exhaustion from the day ensured he wouldn't have lasted long anyway.

Cas smiles back and makes a point to let his eyes wander from the man’s face, down to his waist where the sheet sadly begins to cover him. The man had come home later that evening thanks to a freelance bartending gig, and they didn’t really have time to—

Sighing, Cas turns over onto his back, closing his eyes again, “No. But I can think of other things you could be doing right now.”

A pause and Cas hears the man close the book.

“Mister college man, I thought reading would come first to you,” the man teases, but Cas feels the sheets move and the sound of the book sliding onto the floor next to the bed. A drawer from the man’s bedside table opens, and Cas hears the man rummage around in there.

The sheets move again, and now Cas feels the body heat closer to him. A moment later, a mouth is at his neck and a hand deposits something onto his stomach under the sheets.

Opening his eyes, Cas stays staring at the ceiling for a moment, watching the man’s shadow play in the light.

“You’re going to waste electricity,” he admonishes, a smile back on his face. They didn’t care on nights like tonight. The prize was seeing each other as well as feeling each other. The light highlighted all the good things.

Leaving Cas’s neck, the man leans in by his ear.

“What are you gonna do about it?” He murmurs on a breath, the words barely there and the sound sending fire racing through Cas.

He can’t play a game anymore. The small bottle of oil is cold against his skin under the sheet, and it only ever takes something small with this man for Cas to want to drop everything.

“Turn around,” he whispers back, turning his head so they’re barely an inch apart. If he had it his way, Cas wouldn’t ever be anything other than this far away at all times.

But instead, he watches as his demand is obeyed, the man turning onto his other side, silhouetted by the light somewhat.

Cas reaches under the sheets and grabs the small bottle off his stomach. He uncaps it, and coats his fingers just enough, admiring the golden light playing off the oil. It’s one of those moments where everything feels magical, like time has taken pity on them and stopped so they can enjoy the night for as long as they want. As Cas shifts onto his side as well, he catches the alarm clock. It’s half-past three in the morning, and Cas is suddenly glad it’s Saturday.

He moves himself forward and molds himself against the body in front of him. Without a word, Cas moves his hand down under the sheet and slips two fingers into the man, eliciting a shaky gasp. Cas grins against the back of the man’s neck as he begins to move. The man doesn’t need much; they’re used to it all by now and at this point, the man’s body doesn’t put up much of a resistance, but it’s still fun trying to hit that one—

Another choked off gasp and an additional moan tells Cas he’s found what he was looking for. The man tenses around Cas’s fingers and turns his head more into his pillow. Cas can’t help the small, soft laughter that escapes him, and continues moving, repeating the same action he had over, and over, and over and—

“This is gonna be over quick if you keep doing that,” the man gasps, squirming in place. He’s right, and Cas wants more.

He shifts forward more so the man tilts not fully onto his stomach. It’s enough for Cas to slide the busy hand over the back of the man’s upper thigh and push his leg forward. They’re both breathing hard now. Cas wants to pause and ask if the man is doing alright, making sure they aren’t going too fast or that Cas doesn’t have him in an uncomfortable position—but his brain can’t force his muscles to stop.

He shifts forward, places one more kiss on the back of the man’s neck, and slips in without a word or breath.

The man tenses for a moment and then relaxes. Cas can feel the heartbeat under his palm, and is finally forced to pause, despite the tight _tight_ heat that grabs him.

“Breathe, otherwise I’m going to stop,” Cas threatens, but his voice remains a soft whisper. The man has to relax before they could go further. He had ____ ____ and sometimes they lost themselves. Only one time did they have to go to the hospital, and it was an embarrassing time trying to avoid the doctor’s questions as to why the man’s _____ was _____ so fast and dangerously.

The man takes a deep breath, and Cas can feel it deep within him as well, head to toe. It’s like the inhale fuses them even more together. Slowly, under the palm placed on the man’s chest, Cas feels the ______ steady out.

The silence is caving in on them, and Cas just wants to go, go fast and hard and faster and get their _____ flowing and drawing out noises from the man that always made them both blush.

But Cas holds steady.

Until, impatient, the man wriggles back slightly and squeezes Cas.

“Go,” the man orders, voice muffled where the bulk of the pillow blocks him.

Cas smirks and moves, but only slightly. It isn’t enough for him, but he knows it certainly isn’t enough for the man who is now shaking.

“What’s the magic word?” Cas asks, sliding his hand down from the man’s chest and resting it on the exposed hip.

The attitude that _____ bringst out in Cas sometimes shocks him. It was always there, he knows how sour he comes across to people sometimes, or uncaring. He didn’t talk much to others before meeting the man currently pressed against him, and Cas didn’t care to. He wasn’t social growing up, and was focused on getting in and out of school so he could be a doctor.

He had come a long way in three years.

“Please,” the man whispers, almost like a question. He’s shaking head to toe now, and all Cas will give him is a slight rock back and forth.

It isn’t just Cas who has changed a little over the years. When he first met the man in that _____ during a show, he was prickly and like a brick wall. Cas supposes he himself was the same way, but when they parted ways that night after a light conversation, he didn’t think that man would ever consider getting into bed with another. There was an air of “lady’s man” around him, and he didn’t so much as blink at all the boys flirting with him that night at the _____.

And yet, Cas thinks, here we are.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” Cas teases one more time, but has already begun slowly quickening his pace. Once he got going it was so so _so_ hard to stop.

Unable to control himself either, the man pushes his hips back and out as much as he can, almost pushing Cas completely off of him. He tightens around Cas and that short-circuits Cas’s head.

He decides to forget the begging; now isn’t the time. The action is good as the word anyway.

Cas keeps his head against the back of the man’s neck and begins to move in time with their breathing, speeding up along with it. Cas isn’t at the proper angle to get completely out, so he just circles his hips instead as he also rocks back and forth, craving every inch of heat he can get. The actions yield him a deep groan and then a strangled gasp, soon followed by a soft, barely-there whine.

Half of the turn-on isn’t even the sex, it’s seeing the man that Cas had negative misconceptions about in the beginning get like this. This macho country bumpkin who said he only infiltrated the night club to have fun on his 21st birthday is now a quivering mass of heat and tension in a shared bed. What’s better is that it’s a sight only for Cas.

That's the turn-on. Knowing that only Cas can get the man like this, and no one else gets to see.

It is theirs.

Time floats away from Cas as they continue to move, him still molded to the man’s back and feeling like they are melting together into one, highly pleasurable being. He's sure the exhaustion has something to do with his delirium.

It’s when Cas finally slides his hand down from the man’s hip and onto his cock that they arrive at the finish line. Cas is nearing the end, but when he ghosts a finger over the man, hardly touching him, he feels the rubber band snap in the body he cradled.

The man pushes back as much as he can, rocking his own hips in earnest now, trying to come while using Cas’s hand. There’s a shaky, desperate moan and Cas feels the man begin to lose his rhythm.

His own fire has begun burning out of control and he feels himself at the tipping point, looking over the edge. The signal from his brain to his mouth severed, and all he can hear is himself babbling faintly over the roar of adrenaline in his ears.

“I love you,” he hums into the man’s neck, squeezing his eyes closed. He’s so close, _so close_ — “I love you, I love you, I love y—“

There’s a loud bang, and Cas’s eyes fly open, heart suddenly in his throat.

It takes him a moment to orient himself, confused and still breathing hard.

The light isn’t as warm as he remembered, and the walls are back to that sickly pale green color. There’s no wooden bedside table or a bookshelf near him, or a desk—there’s still a dresser, but its white paint is peeling off the old surface. It isn’t hot at all, either. The window behind him is still open and the breeze changed to blow back into his room.

Still catching his breath, willing his heart to stop trying to beat out of his chest, Cas realizes he’s laying sideways now. The book is gone, and in its place, an erection harder than diamond.

Slightly dizzy, Cas sits up and winces at how tight his muscles have gotten. He sees the book face down on the floor, pages bent under the splayed cover.

The bed has shrunk from a queen to a twin and there is no one else in it. When Cas shifts his legs, they hit the cold spots of the sheets where his body heat couldn’t penetrate.

No one is with him.

All at once, tears spring to his eyes and a sob of frustration escapes Cas as he presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. Instead of screaming his anger, he rubs his eyes until he sees stars burst.

His clothes feel clammy and cold, and when he allows himself to see again, Cas realizes he has sweated through his clothing.

The desire to throw something comes on suddenly, and he grabs his water glass, aiming it at the wall in front of him. He still doesn’t know where he came from, he still doesn’t know the man’s name, still doesn’t know his _own_ name.

He still has nothing other than a hard-on and soiled clothing.

Cas’s brain stops him from launching the glass, knowing when the night nurses hear it, it will cause more problems than solve.

Sighing, he places the glass back down on his metal table. The real desire lies in getting out of bed to finish what his overactive brain started. The damn thing can’t name what _____ is but it can give him vivid dreams to the point Cas thinks he’s back home with the man he loves.

Useless thing.

Wincing at the cool sticky feeling of his clothing while he moves, Cas slides out of bed and limps over to the en-suite bathroom, clutching to the wall for balance. They still haven’t given him anything to help him walk easier.

He flips the light on and sighs at the sight. More pale green walls and a mirror with streaks on it from a sloppy clean. The tiles chill his feet, and the bright light hurts his eyes.

As Cas takes his clothing off, all the warmth that his dream gave him vanishes into the night.


	5. Chapter 5

**CHAPTER FIVE**

**June 18th, 1944**

**Pomona, Kansas**

Whatever hope Dean had been riding on in the last week and a half is crushed by Sunday when Smith delivers the two-day-old paper.

It’s been a tense nine days for Dean.

The loudest part of his logic has been screaming at him that this “invasion” means nothing, and that it doesn’t mean there were many deaths, it doesn’t mean that Cas went there, it doesn’t mean anything. It’s a word on a paper that gave him a scare but it isn’t anything to keep harping on. Cas is fine, probably helping care for the wounded more than being wounded himself, because he’s that kind of person.

However, that is only the tip of the complicated iceberg that Dean has had to battle against for days.

A part of himself has been scolding himself for continuing to expect word from Cas, or to even think about writing to him to make sure he was okay; for daring to try to strong-arm his way back into Cas’s life; for assuming that all would be right as rain if Cas received a letter of concern from Dean only a few weeks after Dean told Cas about that night in January.

But then, an opposing side to Dean would want to break out that letter that he still had tucked up inside his mattress, the letter that says that Cas would still always love him. Didn’t that mean Dean _should_ contact Cas? Send him a letter full of more apologies and declarations of love? Didn’t that mean it was more symbolic of love that Dean _wouldn’t_ move on, and instead show Cas that there was only one person for him?

After that argument was made, Dean then found himself laying in bed at night with those horrifying images that he kept dreaming of when Cas was first deployed: Cas shot dead in a field and forgotten by his troop, Cas stabbed and bleeding out while the war is carrying on without him and can’t stop for him, Cas laying face down in a cobblestone street with his head beaten in by a Nazi prick, Cas collapsed on a beach, surrounded by other dead—

Following the slideshow of horrors, Dean would find himself sitting up in bed and wanting to break the letters back out, wanting to touch them again and read the stupid loopy handwriting that made Dean feel stupid, loopy things, wanting to place all the happy images back in his head and drown out the horror show—

 _But wait,_ his brain would chime in, sinister and demented in the twilight hours, _you have no right to those memories anymore. You forwent that when you slithered into bed with_ —

The next step in the battle of thoughts was that Dean would push aside his brain’s snide comments and get up to walk over to the closet. But, every time he stood, his legs locked into place and it suddenly felt like his feet were surrounded in cement. He couldn’t go to the closet and get those letters.

His Jiminy Cricket was right: Dean ruined it and had no right to try and make himself feel better by reading all the happy, loving, lust filled letters that were addressed to him. Especially those addressed to him while Dean carried his secret for months.

Dean would turn back around and slide back between the sheets and watch the moon out his window slowly cross the sky, refusing to let another thought cross his mind until the next morning.

Then it cycled over again. And again. And again.

Surprisingly, Dean was able to keep a straight face around John. He didn’t bother with extra talk or give his father any more thought than was required. Dean made the meals, cleaned the house in silence, painted the barn in silence (while a battle raged in his head), and sat in the living room with his father in silence.

For four of those nine nights, John once again left for Rudy’s. It was a shock when he invited Dean the night he left, asking if he wanted to get out of the house for a few hours.

Dean, bewildered at his father’s sudden thoughtful invitation, almost said yes. Sometimes John had good nights, more so back then than now, but he still had some good nights.

Dean almost said yes, but then the image of Lee and his smug smile danced across his sight. The taste of metal filled Dean’s mouth and he shook his head.

“It was rough today. I’m even gonna sleep downstairs—don’t wanna overdo it,” he had said, offering a sad smile. It felt genuine.

John had only sniffed in response, grabbed his jacket and keys, leaving a dust cloud hanging in the air when he drove off.

Then Dean’s war with himself cycled back. Except this time, he let a few tears out.

On Sunday, Smith delivers Friday’s paper while John runs to Lawrence for a day laborer job.

Smith was again two days late, but he mentions his wife again and how she couldn’t get out of bed due to her swollen joints. Dean feels briefly bad, but more for the wife than for Smith. She couldn’t go anywhere and had to be stuck in a house with Smith for two days.

Dean pays Smith and Smith only gives Dean a curt nod before turning back to his truck.

Rolling his eyes, Dean dumps the papers onto the table and sits, finishing his leftovers from the night before. The “victory garden” had been thriving, but it was amazing just how fast the sun could kill plants. They’re starting to run out of food again, so John’s had to buck it up and go bang a few nails around.

Dean had offered to join, but John only laughed and said he didn’t want Dean dying in front of the guys. That’s just embarrassing.

So, Dean sits in the kitchen while munching on his leftover hash. He at least had an extra fried egg to put over it to make it a little interesting.

Dean takes the paper from Friday and opens it. He had been peeking at the newspapers since the ninth, seeing if there was any update. Discretion was key, otherwise John would ask Dean why he had such an interest in the Kansas City Star when usually Dean dismissed it as a “boring rag about the price of milk and how many farmers are bankrupt”.

Unfolding it, Dean’s hand, the one other shoveling food into his mouth, pauses right before its target.

His eyes land on the blocky letters “The Horrible Waste of War”, but it isn’t what his focus stays on.

It’s the article right underneath it:

_NORMANDY BEACHHEAD, June 16, 1944 – I took a walk along the historic coast of Normandy in the country of France._

_It was a lovely day for strolling along the seashore. Men were sleeping on the sand, some of them sleeping forever. Men were floating in the water, but they didn’t know they were in the water, for they were dead._

A faint ringing begins in Dean’s head—

_The water was full of squishy little jellyfish about the size of your hand. Millions of them. In the center each of them had a green design exactly like a four-leaf clover. The good-luck emblem. Sure. Hell yes._

_I walked for a mile and a half along the water’s edge of our many-miled invasion beach. You wanted to walk slowly, for the detail on that beach was infinite._

A horrible, prickling sensation begins at Dean’s fingers and toes, crawling inward towards his heart, making him itch—

_The wreckage was vast and startling. The awful waste and destruction of war, even aside from the loss of human life, has always been one of its outstanding features to those who are in it. Anything and everything is expendable. And we did expend on our beachhead in Normandy during those first few hours._

_For a mile out from the beach there were scores of tanks and trucks and boats that you could no longer see, for they were at the bottom of the water – swamped by overloading, or hit by shells, or sunk by mines. Most of their crews were lost._

The prickling sensation buzzes so much that it eventually numbs Dean’s extremities, and he’s forced to drop his fork onto his place, not paying attention to the loud clatter and the food flying everywhere—

_You could see trucks tipped half over and swamped. You could see partly sunken barges, and the angled-up corners of jeeps, and small landing craft half submerged. And at low tide you could still see those vicious six-pronged iron snares that helped snag and wreck them._

_On the beach itself, high and dry, were all kinds of wrecked vehicles. There were tanks that had only just made the beach before being knocked out. There were jeeps that had been burned to a dull gray. There were big derricks on caterpillar treads that didn’t quite make it. There were half-tracks carrying office equipment that had been made into a shambles by a single shell hit, their interiors still holding their useless equipage of smashed typewriters, telephones, office files._

_There were LCT’s turned completely upside down, and lying on their backs, and how they got that way I don’t know. There were boats stacked on top of each other, their sides caved in, their suspension doors knocked off._

_In this shoreline museum of carnage there were abandoned rolls of barbed wire and smashed bulldozers and big stacks of thrown-away lifebelts and piles of shells still waiting to be moved._

_In the water floated empty life rafts and soldiers’ packs and ration boxes, and mysterious oranges._

_On the beach lay snarled rolls of telephone wire and big rolls of steel matting and stacks of broken, rusting rifles._

_On the beach lay, expended, sufficient men and mechanism for a small war. They were gone forever now. And yet we could afford it._

_We could afford it because we were on, we had our toehold, and behind us there were such enormous replacements for this wreckage on the beach that you could hardly conceive of their sum total. Men and equipment were flowing from England in such a gigantic stream that it made the waste on the beachhead seem like nothing at all, really nothing at all._

Every word burns itself into Dean’s mind as his vision narrows and nausea intensifies. He realizes he has been holding his breath, and his heart has started to beat a little too forcefully. Letting it all go in one exhale, Dean closes his eyes as he takes in another gulp of air. Opening them, he’s dismayed to see that the article is still there—

_A few hundred yards back on the beach is a high bluff. Up there we had a tent hospital, and a barbed-wire enclosure for prisoners of war. From up there you could see far up and down the beach, in a spectacular crow’s-nest view, and far out to sea._

_And standing out there on the water beyond all this wreckage was the greatest armada man has ever seen. You simply could not believe the gigantic collection of ships that lay out there waiting to unload._

_Looking from the bluff, it lay thick and clear to the far horizon of the sea and beyond, and it spread out to the sides and was miles wide. Its utter enormity would move the hardest man._

_As I stood up there I noticed a group of freshly taken German prisoners standing nearby. They had not yet been put in the prison cage. They were just standing there, a couple of doughboys leisurely guarding them with tommy guns._

_The prisoners too were looking out to sea – the same bit of sea that for months and years had been so safely empty before their gaze. Now they stood staring almost as if in a trance._

_They didn’t say a word to each other. They didn’t need to. The expression on their faces was something forever unforgettable. In it was the final horrified acceptance of their doom._

_If only all Germans could have had the rich experience of standing on the bluff and looking out across the water and seeing what their compatriots saw._

Dean finishes the article but his vision blurs while his mind numbs as well. The nausea isn’t helped by the feeling of the floor opening right underneath Dean.

He wants to read it again just to prove that he read it wrong the first time and it isn’t as horrifying as the first read through—but his eyes refuse to move to the top of the page.

_It doesn’t mean something happened to him_ , his mind tries, offering the same platitude it has for the last several days. _He could still be a prisoner, he could still be in that port, he may not have been in that first wave—_

But the ringing grows louder and soon Dean can only hear it and his own breathing and quickening heartbeat.

The images that he kept trying to push away in the dead of night come back to him, shining proud in the light of day.

Except now they’ve blended into one large one: Cas, among the many bodies strewn across the beach and still in the water, is shot to death from afar, is run over by a Jeep in the chaos, is trampled by all the men scrambling to get ashore while being fired at, is blown to bits by a shell…

Cas’s face, frozen in shock and terror, cold and bloated from the sea water.

Dean stands so fast, the chair knocks over and bangs on the floor. He hardly hears it; his eyes are still on the newspaper.

It takes him all of half a second to make a decision.

He needs a phone.

In a daze, Dean rips his eyes away from the paper, feet carrying him to the front door. He grabs a couple coins from the mail basket, not fully processing the fact that his hand is shaking so much that they rattle around together before he dumps them in his pocket.

Dean lets his feet carry him through the door, onto the front porch, and starts walking in the direction of town.

Smithy doesn’t ask questions; he’s not too prying if he doesn’t care about you, which is the only redeeming quality about the old geezer. He pries, but behind people’s backs, and he won’t ask your business to your face.

He watches, eyes narrowed, as Dean stumbles into the store, sweating from the pace he took to get into town fast. It’s hot out, but not as bad as previous days, and Dean took the chance.

Turning his back to Smith, Dean ignores him while depositing the coins into the payphone. He hears a disapproving sniff but then the rifling of the paper, indicating Smith doesn’t care too much to pay attention to Dean anymore.

A smooth female voice greets Dean, and asks him where he’d like to be directed.

“Salisbury Town Hall—Connecticut,” he answers, flexing his free hand open and closed, trying to work out the shaking nerves.

After a series of clicks and a few rings, another calm and cool woman’s voice answers:

_“Salisbury Town Hall, Helen speaking, how may I direct your call?”_

Dean swallows hard and wonders if Helen in Connecticut could hear it over the phone, “Who do I speak to if I wanna know the status of a soldier from your town?”

 _“Hang on one moment, sir,”_ Helen says before placing him on hold. Dean glances over his shoulder at Smith, but the man isn’t looking up from his paper.

 _“First Selectman’s office, Anne speaking. How can I help you?”_ A third woman’s voice says, and Dean’s little patience is beginning to wear thin.

“Hello, my name is Dean. I had—have a friend who’s overseas, and I wanted to see what his status was after this French… thing,” he responds, knowing he was stumbling over his words. Usually he’d sweet talk a gal into getting a favor done but his heart wasn’t in it today, “I don’t have a direct contact to his family—“

_“What’s the name, sir?”_

“Clarence Castiel Charleston,” Dean answers, “Born August 6th, 1918, lives at 916 Milton Place.”

 _“Just one moment sir,”_ Anne says. Dean hears another click, and then silence.

A headache is beginning to form and Dean closes his eyes and presses his free hand into his forehead. The day feels ten years long and it’s only noon.

Outside of the store, Dean hears two familiar voices approaching. Through the grime, he sees Lee and Benny by the road, pausing to speak with some older men who are gathered together by the curb smoking cigarettes.

A rock plummets into Dean’s stomach and he quickly looks away.

He doesn’t want to deal with them now.

Dean turns his back once more to the entrance to the store, hoping the two are too busy to stop and chat.

He hasn’t spoken to Lee in months.

The phone clicks, _“Morton Farroway, who’s this?”_

Clearing his throat, Dean speaks quieter as he hears Lee and Benny approach the store.

“My name is Dean Winchester, I’m calling from Pom-Pomona Kansas—“

 _“Well, we don’t get a lot of people callin’ from the midwest!”_ Farroway’s voice booms over the phone, agitating Dean’s headache, _“What can I do for you, son?”_

Dean pinches the bridge of his nose and squeezes his eyes shut. He suddenly wonders if he wants to know the answer to the question that had been beating itself into his brain for the last hour.

“I read about the invasion, and then I read an article about—I mean, I had a friend who was stationed in England. Clarence Castiel Charleston,” saying his name feels like lead in Dean’s mouth. “I was wondering if you were the person to talk to for his status, or if you can connect me with his family or…”

There’s a pause over the line as Dean trails off.

 _“Yeah, hang on a minute son,”_ Farroway says, his cheerful demeanor gone. Dean’s not put on hold, and hears a chair squeaking faintly over the phone.

 _“Usually I’d just direct you to the family yourself, but no one is home right now,”_ The hesitation in Farroway’s voice causes some numbness to return to Dean’s legs, _“We got the notice a few days ago. Mr. Charleston is reported as missing in action.”_

Dean’s throat instantly goes dry, and it feels like a hand is squeezing him around his esophagus. He can’t swallow, and there’s a stitch in his side when he takes a deep breath.

The question had to be asked, but this time he knew he really didn’t want to know the answer.

“Does that mean he’s—“

Dean can’t even say the word.

He hears Farroway sigh over the phone and his stomach drops completely out of him.

_“He’s not reported as dead, but son… we’ve had several soldiers from this area already who were reported missing, and it’s been years. Some even from the first world war. Some even from the Civil War.”_

Despite the life he had lived, his mother dying, his brother leaving, his father being just who he was, the heart problems, the sexual confusion that dogged him for most of his adolescence, the fear and depression of living in Kansas for as long as he did and then coming back—Dean never lost hope. He had gotten down before, cried some tears in private, but refused to give fully into that feeling of hopelessness and helplessness. Dean knew he got it from his mother, and over time, he realized that by staying steadfast, he was still honoring her in a way that John couldn’t dream of.

But now—the last shred of hope that Dean had, burns itself in front of his eyes with the ashes floating away, forever gone and never coming back.

Cas is dead.

Cas is dead, Dean’s brain repeats, Cas is dead, Cas is dead, Cas is dead—

He’s dead and just not found yet. He’s dead somewhere on the beach, or floating in the ocean while other waves of soldiers come in to take the land. He’s dead and forgotten somewhere.

Cas is dead and he is never coming back.

And one of the last things he experienced was the sense of betrayal and abandonment from Dean.

“Thank you,” Dean says, his voice sounding miles away. It doesn’t sound like him, but someone said it, and he heard Farroway say something back. Dean hangs up the phone without processing the man’s words, not caring all that much.

He realizes after he puts the phone back on the hook that he never asked for the Charlestons’ phone number.

Then again, Dean thinks, maybe it’s for the better. Michael didn’t like him, and he doesn’t think Gabriel would be home. Dean never heard Cas talk about his father too much, and there was no mother in the mix.

There’s no one to talk to up there, and they’d wind up asking too many questions anyway.

“Dean?” A voice, sounding just as far away as Dean’s own, says his name. He knows who it is, and can’t turn and look at him. Not now. Not with the rising tide of shame inside Dean; not with his lack of awareness right now; not with the pure horror imagination playing out in his mind.

“Hey, Dean,” the voice is closer this time. Hands lightly touch his shoulder, and shakes it slightly.

Dean knows those hands. He knows them very well.

He forces himself out of the stupor, but his mind keeps echoing the conclusion he came to. Blinking, he looks over to his left and sees Lee and Benny staring at him, concern lining their face.

“What’s going on?” Lee asks, frowning. Dean avoids looking at him in the eye and shakes himself loose from Lee’s hand.

The sound of gates, chains, and walls descending over Dean is loud in his head, almost drowning out the death chants that were on repeat. He takes a deep breath and straightens himself up.

“Nothing,” he says, still not recognizing his voice. Dean’s legs move on their own, carrying him past Lee and Benny. Everything looks hazy and dim, like he’s walking on a foggy morning. His head feels like someone stuffed it full of cotton balls, and his mouth tastes bitter, like metal.

Dean glides out of the door, keeping his shoulders straight and his face neutral, all while visions of Cas dead in various ways and places swim in front of his eyes. He can’t stop it.

He passes the smoking men, he passes the gas pumps, he passes the post office, he passes the church—Dean’s feet know the way home. They don’t need him paying attention.

The goal is to get back to the house, back to his room, back to his bed, and back to—

“Dean! Hey!” Benny’s voice calls Dean this time. There are footsteps running along the dirt road behind him, and Dean tries his best to ignore them. He quickens his pace as much as he can, but the sun is high and hot with no breeze in any direction to cool him off.

Benny and Lee eventually catch up with Dean half a minute later, panting in the heat.

Dean keeps walking. They don’t stop him, except lapsing into a brief silence, walking close behind him. Dean ignores them, concentrating instead on getting his brain to default into a mindless buzz, void of all images and thoughts—

Benny suddenly steps ahead and blocks Dean’s stride. The man is taller with a slightly bigger build, and usually could stop anyone in his path. But Dean keeps his eyes downcast, trying to step around him.

Instead, Benny takes Dean by the shoulders and halts him fully.

“What the hell is goin’ on?” He asks, trying to catch Dean’s gaze, but Dean makes sure to keep his eyes off to the side. He can’t look right at Benny… he doesn’t want to look at any—

Benny grabs Dean’s chin and forces his head back in front.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he asks, more as a demand.

_Don’t, don’t tell them. Don’t let it back in your head. Don’t do it, don’t do it—they don’t deserve to know—_

Dean looks away again, but this time stumbles into the fixed stare of Lee, who frowns at Dean like Dean has just escaped the mental ward.

Dean can’t look away now.

Lee doesn't look exactly like Cas, but it was close enough for their first go around. Dark hair (darker, slightly longer than Cas’s but still—) bright blue eyes, and a summer tan that lasted well into winter as well. He’s shorter than Cas, but that didn’t matter while horizontal in bed. The playfulness, childish nature was more present in comparison to Cas’s sometimes overt seriousness, and it was deadly. It was fatal to Dean and Cas’s relationship. Lee is a parody of the real thing, but on that one night in January, it didn’t matter. Dean was at such a low point, drowning, that anyone with a hand to help—

And now, Dean feels himself falling backward into the same void.

Everything, all at once, tangles in Dean’s head.

Crying in front of Benny and Lee wasn’t something Dean cared too much about growing up, but he had avoided it as much as possible. He avoided any vulnerable emotions in front of anyone, even his closest friends. Not only was a sign of weakness a belt to the ass or being locked in his room with no dinner, it was also fodder for people like Alexander King who shoved him around for months after he caught Dean crying in the bathroom one afternoon. It was two weeks after his mother had died, and Dean couldn’t hold it in anymore.

It contorted into the default position of no complaining, no crying, no whining, no questioning.

However now, Dean had cried more in the past year than he ever had at any point in his life since his mother died. It was in private, though, and he’d intended to always keep it private.

But it’s the concern on Benny’s, and Lee’s almost familiar face that topples Dean’s lousy attempt at rebuilding himself into something he really isn’t anymore.

Everything that had been building since Dean got the letter from Cas, everything since Dean had sent that letter at the end of May, everything since January—everything since last June—bubbles over and unleashes all at once like a river that broke its dam.

Legs shaking, he feels himself begin to slip from Benny’s grasp and eases down into the dirt and gravel. It makes no difference if he’s standing or sitting: the tremors are all over his body. Lee and Benny go down with him, sitting along the edge of the road.

Finally, at long last, after the longest year Dean had experienced in his entire life, the hand around his throat loosens and a loud, uncontrollable sob is wrenched from deep inside him. It had been building for so long that Dean hadn’t even realized it. The noise scares him, but it only rolls into another one, not as loud, but still horrifying to hear come out of his mouth. His heart is hammering now as the tears that he had tried so hard to hold back start to rush out of him. It’s like the lock had finally broken, and was then trampled to bits by every emotion he tried keeping behind that gate.

The feeling of a hand returning to his throat returns, hurting him and making his muscles ache. Dean gasps for air as Benny draws him in close. Dean lets him. Over Benny’s shoulder, Lee sits back on his heels in the dirt, looking as shocked and horrified as Dean feels.

“Breathe, man—breathe,” Benny says, keeping his hold tight enough so Dean can’t wiggle away to escape.

Dean tries to obey but the hot air around them doesn’t provide him with any relief. If anything, it feels like the world is closing in on him, trying to bury him. He hates feeling like this.

He doesn’t protest Benny’s attempts at calming him down, and Dean refuses to look at Lee as he clenches his fists in Benny’s shirt and then lets go, staving off the darkening corners of his vision. He repeats the motion several times before he can finally feel the air return to his lungs.

The three of them stay there for nearly a half-hour, silent and still.

Benny and Lee decide to walk Dean home, despite Dean’s insistence that he’s fine and that he can walk home alright, that it’s all out of him, that _really_ guys, I’m okay—

But they don’t take no for an answer. And secretly, deep down, Dean is glad they don’t. It’s still hard with Lee walking with them, but he understands his place and stands on the other side of Benny, as far as he can get from Dean.

The walk home remains silent, and Dean’s brief moment of calm starts to dive back into that spiral of black nothingness with guilt, shame, and fear pulling him by the neck.

Thoughts begin emerging of him stealing his father’s truck, driving to Kansas City, and taking a train back to New York where he thinks that just by being there, that means Cas would come back.

That’s the tame one.

The worse one is when they come into sight of the house and the barn Dean was almost finished with. The wild fantasy of climbing up to the loft window of the building, onto the roof, and then flinging himself off to the ground below flashes across his mind. Thankfully only once. It leaves as soon as it came.

More shame comes with that. Cas wouldn’t want him to do that.

Somewhere up in his room is that letter from September where Dean, angry after a drunken blowout with his father, his head in a bad place from Cas’s letters that week, growing ever more and more sad and lonely, wrote back that night as one of his weekly letters that should Cas die over there in battle (in Cas’s third letter in that package, he mentioned the nightmares he had been having) Dean would die at the farm soon after. The distance was already unbearable. One of them in Heaven with the other still on earth was unacceptable.

A week and a day later, Dean had received another packet of letters. The first one was written, scribbled, furious, with Cas yelling at him to not even _dare_ think about that. It was one thing to make vague jokes in the guise of romanticism, but it was another thing to make the threat while upset, angry, and depressingly sad. Reading it, Dean could hear Cas’s voice yelling, not out of malice, but out of caring and fear. He only ever heard Cas yell twice: once at Michael over the phone, and once at Dean when Dean had a brief second doubt of their relationship at the very beginning, frustrated that Dean couldn’t make up his mind.

But Dean could still hear him yell through a piece of paper and pen.

Dean had written back, apologetic, and even wrote a dirty little story to try and perk Cas back up.

He promised he wouldn’t ever do that.

Still, Dean thinks as he, Benny, and Lee approach the house, the thought is tempting.

Dean doesn’t want Lee in his room. He also doesn’t want Benny there, but he definitely doesn’t want Lee there. But he doesn’t open his mouth and say that, because Dean knows if he opens his mouth again, he’ll start crying again and he’s already starting to feel like a melodramatic widowed spinster.

John isn’t home when they get back, and Dean immediately climbs the stairs to his bedroom, craving to lay down and close his eyes. It’s still the middle of the day, but Dean wonders if he did go to sleep, he could wake up and it’d be last spring, before Cas got his draft letter, before Cas had to leave, before Cas was shot to death—

And they could run away.

Dean hears Benny say something about a washcloth and water and hears him splinter off into the kitchen to run the tap. The footsteps behind him are Lee’s following him up the stairs. All Dean wants to do is turn around and push him back down.

There was a reason why he practically ceased all contact with the guy.

As Dean enters his room, he hears the door close behind him. Annoyance and frustration beginning to build, he turns around, ready to square off with Lee.

Instead, Lee is staring at the small, threadbare carpet and blinking fast.

_I don’t want to deal with this._

Dean ignores Lee, turns back around, and walks over to his bed, kicking off his shoes. He just wants to get under those sheets and pass out for an hour or two.

“I didn’t know it was like that,” Lee says, voice small and quiet.

Tensing, Dean closes his eyes, trying to keep his rising anger down below boiling level.

“I don’t want to do this,” he says, still not turning around as he shoves his shoes under the bed with his foot, “Not now.”

_Not now, not ever, not with you, never you—you’re half the reason why I feel like I do right now so don’t even think about saying anything otherwise I will launch you out of the window face first—_

Dean is greeted with silence and he finally takes a deep breath. Everything feels like a tornado, spinning everything up with Dean unable to grasp onto anything to avoid getting sucked into it.

Benny comes up the stairs a moment later, sparing them from any more awkwardness. He has a damp washcloth and a glass of water. Dean tries to smile while taking it. Without caring about his sweaty clothing, he goes to lay down in bed on top of the bedspread, pressing the washcloth to his eyes. He hadn’t realized how swollen his eyes must have gotten until he felt the coolness sink against them. It felt nice.

“I feel like a hysterical woman,” Dean mumbles, covering his already covered eyes with his hands, making the reddish light through the fabric darker.

“You sounded like a hysterical woman,” Benny confirms, but there’s no malice in his voice, “You gonna be okay?”

Dean pauses. His default was always “I’m fine” even when clearly, he wasn’t fine. But he would always say it to get someone off his back. He doesn’t talk feelings or talk about whatever hurt him that day. It was always, “I’m fine,” and whoever was trying to open him up shuts up and moves on.

And Dean had learned over the course of three years to break out of that habit, and that when someone asks you if you’re okay, then that means they care. Cas had confessed to Dean one night that he himself did the same thing Dean did. Growing up in a strict military family with two older brothers with Cas being the “accident,” he was often ignored. When he was upset over something, he was ignored even more, which then led to him constantly confirming to people he was “fine” when in actuality, he would be far from it.

The both of them broke the habit and trusted each other with the truth.

And now Dean, far from that man who first left the farm four years ago, decides to extend that trust to those who care enough to ask.

“No—I’m not going to be okay,” Dean answers, frowning and trying to swallow the shakiness in his voice, “I want to throw myself off the barn right now.”

“Dean—“

“But I won’t.”

“Dean please—“ this time it was Lee. Dean sighs.

“I made a promise, so I won’t do it,” Dean lifts the washcloth and turns his head over to Lee and Benny, standing in his room with the worst worried expressions. “I owe him that much, not to break that promise. So I won’t. But I won’t be okay.”

Benny takes a deep breath before looking away, nodding to himself.

“You want us to come back tomorrow?”

“Nah. I may cry like one but I promise I’m not a baby,” Dean answers, giving Benny a better attempt at a smile before turning back and flipping the washcloth to a cooler side. “I’m getting the mail tomorrow. I’ll stop by the bar around one to help you set up.”

Dean doesn’t know if that last part would come true, but he hopes that by saying it, it would happen.

“Alright, but if you’re not there by one after, then I’m taking my truck and—“

“Oh go away,” Dean flaps his hand in the direction where Benny and Lee stand. The smile is more genuine this time. Third time’s the charm.

But Benny’s threat means more to Dean than he’d admit to the guy.

Benny scoffs and swats Dean on the leg before Dean hears him head to the door. The hinges creak as he opens it, and Dean hears the scuffling out on the landing.

“Take care of yourself, Dean,” Lee says, his voice still quiet, too soft for Dean to handle at the moment.

Before he can respond, he hears the door close completely.

Dean sighs and flips the cloth again, knowing eventually he’ll have to take the water next to him and dampen the thing again.

Going back to the tactic he had tried earlier, Dean forces himself to stop all thoughts and only concentrate on the darkness behind his eyelids and washcloth. He needs sleep. It won’t make him okay, but God he needs to—

As he feels himself begin to slip away, he hears an engine approaching the house. It rolls onto the dirt and gravel driveway and the rattling engine quits. A sinking feeling pulls Dean further into the mattress, and he wishes the thing would swallow him whole. His father is back.

Dean hears muffled voices and almost gets up to look out the window, but eventually decides against it. He feels too heavy, as if any movement would cause him to fall over, or in on himself again.

He hears boots over the rocks outside, traveling up the porch steps. The downstairs screen door screeches on its hinges as John pulls it open, and then Dean can hear the footfalls approach the staircase. As John ascends each step, Dean feels the heat inside him, and the slowly building nausea, rise.

“What’s goin’ on?” John asks, pushing open the unlatched door.

Dean sighs, and then coughs at the pressure in his chest.

“Under the weather. Went for a walk for some fresh air and couldn’t make it back so they helped.”

The washcloth stays in place and Dean didn’t dare remove it. He didn’t want John seeing his red, puffy eyes and what Dean was sure was a very pale and scared face.

“I’ll cook dinner then,” John mumbles, turning and shuffling out of Dean’s room, closing the door behind him.

Finally alone, Dean goes back to his earlier exercise of concentrating on nothing.

But the image of Cas face down on a beach with blood running into the ocean water greets him instead, and Dean nearly bursts into tears again.

**June, 1943 to November, 1943**

**Sections from select letters passed between Pomona, Fort Monmouth, and Weymouth**

[…] Your last letter was absolutely filthy and I read it ten times already. You’re making it hard to sit still. By the way, one of my fellow soldiers read your letter about “kicking Roosevelt’s ass” and said you were one tough broad. He offered back up and I said I would mention it. Please don’t beat on the President. […] Love, Cas

[…] There’s nothing to do here with all the animals gone so I’ve decided to expand my expert storytelling skills. Maybe I can sell one to a gent’s mag and get some extra money. But, your needs come first. I’m trying to get you to pop right in front of your bunkmates […] Don’t hold back, D

[…] We had a tornado last night and my dad slept right through it. I swear that man could either be dead or sleeping and I would never know the difference. The house and barn were spared other than some minor roof damage. It’s gonna take forever to fix this thing[…] Bored as hell, D.

[…] Having one of those nights so I’m staying up late to write this. It’s hard to sleep without you here, and I think we’ll complain about it until it’s fixed. Sometimes I think I could scream at how much you broke me. I never used to be such a sap and now you have me wrapped around your finger. Who gave you the right? […] Frustrated and annoyed, D

[…] The soldier who I mentioned earlier, Garth, he was the one who offered to help you beat up the President. He now wants to say how impressed he is that you know how to rebuild a barn and fix a roof and says I’m one lucky guy. He also wondered how it felt getting a hand job from a woman whose hands were so rough and calloused. I told him I’d get back to him on that. I’m still debating on whether to tell you this or cross it out until the words are completely gone. Your ego is big enough already.[…] Sending your rough hands some lotion, Cas

[…] July in Jersey is horrible and I’m considering taping my nose closed. How can people stand to live around here? I’m also still the only one in my group that can shoot a gun properly. I don’t know if that means I’m really good, or if I somehow got surrounded with idiots so the bar is set lower. One of the guys had his girl’s pictures taken from him by a bunkmate and they were stapled to the wall. I promise I didn’t look. No one has better breasts than you, dear, and so I won’t give anyone else the time of day […] What’s your bust size again? Cas

[…] Happy Birthday old man! By the time you read this you’ll be two weeks into 27 and I’m considering sending away for a cane to give you. A shame they got rid of all your hair, I wanted to ask you how many grays you had now. But, on the serious side of things, I miss you a lot and today I’m dreaming of Coney Island and how I haven’t seen a body of water in two months now. I’m also attaching another short story I wrote. You, me, that cabin in Vermont, and a whole night of—well you know. I also want you to know that it took up the last of my paper so this is all you’re getting this week. I have to somehow convince my dad to let me take the truck into Lawrence for supplies. Wish me luck.[…] Hoping you can keep it in your pants around your bunkmates, D

[…] I’m here to state unequivocally that England is the worst, even in August. It’s still cold and windy, and the sun hardly stays out for more than an hour. That story you gave me really warmed me up though. I just got it, and already have almost worn the paper down. It’s easier to “take care of myself” here, so there’s an upside. There’s more down time. Though, on the days we do train, it’s completely overboard. I’m not an out of shape guy but even I’m getting winded. […] Actions speak louder than words, Cas

[…] It’s so miserable here. It’s been miserable for three days and I thought we would have seen some sun by now. I know you’re roasting over there. Please send some warmth my way. Now, I say this knowing it isn’t going to help us, but the gloomy days are only just pushing the gloominess inside me. There’s a lot of idleness going on right now, and knowing I can’t leave until the war is done, I just want to go over there and stick Hitler with whatever I got. But it’s just ballooning this sadness that I can’t shake. Endless rainy days and the unknown going forward—It’s just frustrating I guess. I’m having a hard time writing this […] Love, Cas

[…] Today is the fourth day of rain and wind, and my mood is completely down. What didn’t help was some of the men going out on the town last night with some nurses, laughing and joking. They offered an invitation but I couldn’t do it. I am not trying to be anti-social, but it’s hard to force a smile on my face while a girl is trying to stick a hand down my pants. It just feels wrong going out without you.[…] Please send more things to read, Love, Cas.

[…] I had a scare yesterday. Part of me didn’t want to tell you, I’m sorry, but I can’t not let you know. I had a scare and wound up in the hospital for two days. It wasn’t a hot day and the sun was behind the clouds but it was humid. I stayed in the barn too long to avoid my dad. He started bugging me about finding a girl around here so I could get out of the house. He didn’t like me “moping” around. I didn’t think I was moping, but then again, I’m trying to shut a lot of things off in my head. You know me—I can’t turn it off sometimes. But I’m trying. So I wound up in the barn trying to avoid those questions and stayed up there too long. My dad said he found me passed out in the loft and drove me to LMH. I didn’t remember the trip. But I’m alright now. They gave me some “fluids” (I hate that word) and I’m back at home relaxing in my room. Sometimes, when I was younger, I wondered if I should have said fuck it and fake my form to get into the army anyway. That thought happened again when you got the letter. But now I’m realizing that I would have died. I would have killed myself. Nothing’s feeling right inside right now. […] Love, Dean

[…] I got a letter from Sam of all people. I haven’t heard from him in five years and now I suddenly have a letter. It’s not even addressed to dad, just me. I didn’t realize he knew I was home. No idea who would have told him. Then again, the network of people who knows someone who knows someone who will eventually get to Sam in California is something I shouldn’t underestimate. But yes, I got a letter. It wasn’t anything major, just asking me how I was and giving an update on his life. Still no apology of course. That’s beneath him. He’ll never admit when he’s wrong. Now that I think of it maybe he didn’t know I was back and just assumed I had stayed here all these years. Damn. […] Lonely in bed, D

[…] There really isn’t anything to do around here. I went to Rudy’s last night to pal around with Benny while Lee worked at the bar. It was okay. I forgot how boring people could be out here which is sad because these two have been my best friends for years. But nothing happened in their lives over the last three years that’s worth talking about. I spent most of the night talking about New York and Christopher Street. I haven’t mentioned you yet. They are safe to talk to about it though, so don’t worry about that. Both are sexually adventurous themselves. They wouldn’t rat me out. But it was just painful. By the time I got home (I left my dad there) I felt miserable. Bringing up our memories, even if I didn’t bring up you, was just another kick in the stomach. […] I want to move back, love D

[…] The behavior of some men here is absolutely disgusting. They ask their wives for nude pictures and then hang them up for the entire dorm to see. They said it’s to boost morale, but I can’t imagine those poor women would want it done like this. And not only that, there’s one guy here who one day showed me a letter from his wife with some handprints of paint from a new baby that he had all of 3 months with. The next night, I saw him fucking an English nurse in the alleyway outside of a bar. And I’m not saying that word like how we use it like when you’re begging—I’m using it as it was completely emotionless, and I’m sure all he wanted was to get his rocks off. All I kept thinking as I was walking home was how bad I felt for his wife and kid. I’m very happy that we are different than that. […] Please don’t send me nude photos, love Cas

[…] Ignore my last letter. Please send me nude photos. I promise I won’t be sharing them with anyone since I am starting to hate everyone else here, but I’m desperate. I had a very vivid dream last night which had me waking up with a hard-on that I think could hammer nails. I don’t have a creative way of words like you do with your stories so I don’t know how to describe it. But you took two of my ties, again, and tied my wrists to the bed, again, and nearly rode me out into my early death, again. I wish I could just copy what was in my head onto this paper so you could have seen what I saw. I think the worse thing than waking up with the aftermath of that dream, was that it went away before I could do anything about it. I realized it was probably the sadness I also woke up with. Someone here said that he was “heartsick” over not seeing his girl for so long, and I think that’s what this is.[…] Love, Cas

[…] The training drills did not go well for me today. The sergeant called me distracted, which I suppose I was.. I don’t know why I’m struggling with this more than others. Does it mean we loved each other more than they love their partners? Or am I just a pansy? I guess things were easier when I was in New Jersey and still on the same continent. I have to scrub floors tonight. […] Love, Cas

[…] I saw, for the first time, someone severely wounded. We traveled to a different base to deliver some supplies, and they had a medical unit there. This guy’s arm and legs were torn to shreds and wrapped in bandages that were almost soaked with blood. They had flown him in a Douglas C-47 Skytrain and it was worse than anything I’ve seen in school. I guess they watered it down for us. I’ll admit to you that this was the first time I thought about never becoming a doctor like I had wanted to. Right now it’s hard to get the images out of my head, so this is my heartfelt plea for more stories. I don’t even care if they are particularly dirty or anything—I just want a story. And I want to come home. I miss you. […] Love, Cas

[…] I got into another fight today with my dad. I then almost stole his keys, got in the truck and went to Kansas City. From there, I was going to take the train back to New York, fly myself or take a boat to England, and hunt you down. I’m being serious when I say that I was pacing in my room, debating this until about 3 in the morning. Honestly, the only thing that’s truly stopping me is money. I know my father has two shoeboxes full of cash somewhere on this property after the banks went under. He didn’t trust them anymore. Just don’t know where they are. Rest assured if I find it, I’m getting to you. It’s not just a little joke anymore.[…] Love D

[…] Another day, another argument with my dad. He again, AGAIN brought up finding a nice someone or some shit. He said he wanted grandchildren to which I said “bullshit”. He doesn’t like children. He hardly liked his own children. The “bullshit” got me a smack to the mouth but it was worth it. He just wants me gone even though I make all his food for him now. Honestly it’s a miracle he didn’t starve when I was gone. He can take his stupid suggestions and shove them up his ass. I didn’t stop at “bullshit” though because he didn’t. He accused me of sucking up all his money, I said that he’d be dead if I didn’t keep getting the food that we now had, he said he worked hard for his money, and I said maybe if you didn’t keep drinking it away you’d still have some. I then pointed out that if we still had the animals that we’d have some more dollars. That got him grabbing my face and pushing me against the table. I fell but it wasn’t dramatic. I’ll get a bruise from the corner of the table but I’ll live with it. I had been wanting to say all that since I got back. […] Love D

[…] Im a ltle drunkright now. not a lot drunk just a lille. went to ruds with Benny and Lee gt us tipsy. I hadnt been drink in a longwhile. I didnt overdo itipromise. I did tell them aboutyu thoguh. We sat in theback of BennyS’s truck and I splled everythig. Lee was thmost symphec. Benny didnt likehow sad i had got over the las few months. He told me that I shld forgt about you and mve on. I told him BULSHIT. he got mad after th at and went back nside but Lee talk sommore. He tol me to keep perspectave. no idea what he meant so maybe you will. I tol him i was sad and yes it was bad but its worth it becas I love yu a lot. Like alotalotalot. It hurts evry morning waking up without you and sometims i’m crying but I stil love you. But he was niser about it than Benny. Asshole. Speaking of holes—[…] D ⬛⬛ ⬛ oop almst put my fll name

Come Thanksgiving, a black cloud had settled permanently over Dean.

The sun itself hadn’t been out by now for nearly a week, and there were some colder rainstorms that forced him to stay inside. If he got a cold, it was another trip to the hospital. His third one. Dean decided not to tell Cas about the second trip, happening just at the end of October. It was just one of those days that the sadness and depression hit him hard, and he felt pain in his chest. His father went with Smith to Ottawa for some lumber to help Smith fix up the shop after a freak thunderstorm earlier that week.

Dean knew driving himself when he was on the verge of a heart attack was stupid, but he had no where else to go. They didn’t have a phone in the house, and no one would come pick him up all the way out there.

The doctors couldn’t find anything wrong, and asked what Dean had been doing prior to the pain. Dean had no good answer, because all he had been doing was thinking. That day had started off bad with some snide comments from John, and all Dean wound up doing was re-reading letters from Cas up in his room. It was hard for Dean to process the fact it had been nearly six months since they were separated.

Dean wound up telling the doctor he had been lugging wood around to repair their porch and probably just overdid it. Fluids, rest, back home by nightfall.

But by Thanksgiving, by the start of the holidays, Dean’s misery seemed to have ballooned overnight. Benny and Lee weren’t helping.

After their drunken confessional several weeks prior, Benny made it his life’s mission to try and snap Dean out of it. If anything, it made Dean more miserable every time Benny decided to highlight just why he and Cas should break it off. Being in a relationship with a man was hard enough, but doing it from thousands of miles away was even harder and did nothing for Dean. That was Benny’s argument every time something even closely related to Cas came up in conversation. It was beginning to get to the point where Dean wanted to deck Benny in the face, and had verbally threatened that he’d do it, too.

What was beginning to scare Dean the most over the course of those weeks was that a small, very small, very quiet part of him had started to test-run this theory of Benny’s, of letting it all be pushed aside and move on. That small part of Dean latched onto the fears of Cas never coming home from a never ending war, or worse, being killed and coming home in a pine box.

So now the black cloud hung over him as he helped Lee get Rudy’s ready for their pre-Thanksgiving party.

“You can save yourself a lot of trouble if you just end it now and stop being so miserable,” Benny said, sweeping while Dean wiped the tables.

“I’m not that miserable,” Dean responded, knowing it was a full blown lie. He heard Benny scoff and continue to sweep.

“Do you know when he’s coming back?” Lee asked from the bar, polishing glasses. Lee had mercifully been quiet up until recently. The whole thing must have scared him more than angered him like Benny. Benny still preferred the ladies. Lee was queerer than Dean and this was his first time seeing a relationship, even from a distance.

But he had since found his voice.

“No, I don’t,” Dean answered, turning his back to them both and heading to another table. Their questions always got him feeling ten times worse than he did waking up.

“Then—“

“Listen,” Dean barked, throwing down his rag and turning back to Benny and Lee, “Neither of you have been in a position like this, and you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. So if you’re not gonna support me, then leave me alone.”

The three of them lapsed into a tense silence, and Dean went back to work, his headache growing.

After a few minutes, Lee cleared his throat.

“You uh—you said you didn’t have enough money to get over there?” he asked.

Dean stood back up, almost done with his tables. He glanced over to Lee and nodded.

“Why don’t you come work here?”

Dean frowned and shook his head. It was something he had already considered when he first came back but between his dilapidated home that needed work and just the people around Rudy’s, “I don’t wanna deal with the townie drunks.”

“You can get some decent coin working here.”

“Yeah but—“

“Come on, did the city really turn you this soft? Don’t be a pansy.”

But there was another reason that Dean didn’t want to say. The hard truth was that he knew once he started working in town, he was never going to leave town.

That was his biggest fear.

Dean had been sure, almost stubbornly so, that he’d keep moving on like Cas was still alongside him all the way.

But he was naive.

Dawn came on Thanksgiving and Dean didn’t bother getting out of bed for breakfast. The sky was still gray, the room was cold, and his father wasn’t even home to split a Thanksgiving breakfast with. They didn’t celebrate it anymore.

Instead, Dean reached behind his mattress to where the bundle of letters he picked up yesterday on his way home from Rudy’s were tucked. Dean wasn’t in the party mood, and he ignored Benny’s disapproving stare as Dean departed later that afternoon.

He had wanted to go through the letters last night but found himself, for the first time, not wanting to right away.

Their letters to each other were slowly becoming more and more… sad. Not even a beautiful kind of sad that would lead to them writing pages of love and how much they loved each other and their life together—just sadness.

It was slowly morphing itself into dread. And that dread was morphing into a lack of motivation for reading the letters from Cas or writing them to him.

But laying in bed that morning, Dean decided to read them. And he decided to write one or two letters before he sent them all out tomorrow. His stack for Cas wasn’t the biggest it’s been, but he still had several in there. Dean hoped that at least some of them were happier.

He understood that it wasn’t just Cas who was becoming melancholy—as Dean’s heartbreak grew day to day, he knew it was coming across on paper.

Their misery was beginning to build on top of each other.

Grabbing Cas’s letters, still half asleep, Dean made the promise to himself that despite not giving Thanksgiving more than two seconds of his attention in the past, he would use the day to write calm and happy letters to Cas.

Dean ripped open the envelope, and let the several letters fall to the bed. He picked up the first one and began reading:

_Dear D,_

_They don’t celebrate Thanksgiving over here, naturally, so I’m not sure what I’m going to do with myself. I’m still a week and a half out, but I had the absolute worst chicken dinner the other night and I’m thinking about when you dragged me upstate to a turkey shoot. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to get one._

_And by thinking, I mean I’m drooling. I’m so hungry and I just want a nice turkey dinner with potatoes and carrots and you next to me. I can literally still smell that dinner. By the sound of it, you’d think they don’t feed me here. They do, but they also don’t know what salt and pepper is. Why couldn’t I have been stationed in a country that knows how to cook food?_

_There’s going to be an attempt by my fellow soldiers in a thanksgiving dinner, and they’re already planning for it, but I have serious doubts how well it will go. I’ll let you know if I get food poisoning or not._

_It’s been strange around here. We are all going through more combat training. I’m happy to say that I did get my focus back. We worked with the big guns again today, and my partner wasn’t incompetent. Annoyingly, he was still treating this all as a joke. People start to shun those who have no fear about this war. They said those who have no fear are dead guys walking._

_For what it’s worth. I’m scared._

_I’ll admit, I don’t know what to do with myself. I haven’t for a while now. It’s either training, sleeping, (trying) to eat, or training again. Some nights I’ve been going out but each time I come back more miserable than when I went out._

_It feels like a weird limbo, like some kind of purgatory where no one is moving on but we’re not allowed to go back. The day to day training and other duties during the day help a little, but not too much._

_This morning was one of those mornings when I wake up and wonder how much this is affecting you as well. I know both of our letters haven’t been peppy and happy as time went on, but even then, how much is this all really affecting us?_

_I want to see your face. I wish I gave you my camera. I wish I_ took _my camera. Actually seeing each other, even in print, may do us a world of good. Maybe I will try to find a camera around here._

_I’ve never felt this far into a rut before, and waking up every morning is getting harder. This may be too heavy, but it needs to get out, and I can’t talk to anyone else about this. All the men, when not concentrating on training, are concentrating on the girls, be it if they have one at home or not. They’re afraid and trying to distract themselves. But I can’t do that. And I can’t swoon over you like how I want. They’ll want to see pictures, know our stories, but I wouldn’t have anything to give them._

_It’s very lonely. And I know how lonely you are. I know your friends don’t like seeing you like that._

_I believe in the bond we have, first and foremost. Winter is here more or less, and it’ll get worse for us before it gets better. I know you’re feeling the same way, so don’t try to argue otherwise. But you know that while I may be sitting on a cold bed in England, I’m very much laying beside you, be it Kansas or back in New York. I am with you, and I’m not going anywhere._

_Please remember that I love you, and I will never stop loving you._

_Cas_

Dean didn’t realize he had been crying until a tear fell off his cheek, and he didn’t react fast enough before it hit the paper, right next to where Cas stated he would never stop loving Dean.

He sniffed and wiped his eyes, placing the letter back down on the bed next to the others.

Cas knew. Cas knew just how much Dean had been struggling over the last two months and Dean didn’t know how, because while his letters were melancholy he always wanted to make sure he was careful. But Cas knew, somehow, how much Dean had been struggling.

And Dean knew, he just knew, that Cas was scared for more than just his life over there on the front lines.

Shame ran through Dean as he glanced at the other letters, afraid of reading them. Instead, he re-read the first letter, feeling worse and worse and worse—

Cas was afraid Dean was going to leave him.

He didn’t say it outright, but Dean knew that’s what his words meant. They didn’t need three years to learn each other’s ticks and habits, how they hid their true emotions and how they masked what they were feeling on their face. They learned all that within three months of knowing each other.

They were good for each other.

Straightening himself, stretching, Dean opened his shades and looked down outside to the ground. There was a fresh, light coating of snow, finally hiding some of the muddy brown that blanketed the midwest this time of year.

Instead of getting out of bed to start a fire downstairs, Dean put on his robe and sat at his desk, determined as hell to write a letter to prove to Cas that there was nothing to worry about.

Someone has moved a radio into Cas’s room for entertainment. He already plowed through the books they gave him. Other than more memories of the man and Cas together, the books did help a little, but nothing in the super helpful way. He still couldn’t name _____ and his apartment on _____ ______. The childhood home he grew up in was in ________ a town in _________.

He doesn’t know his name.

He doesn’t know where his boot camp training was.

In terms of the man of who Cas belonged to, was involved with, who Cas loved—he still can’t remember his name, but Cas remembers where the man currently lives:

Kansas.

Cas doesn’t mention that state to the Army medical people. Cas knows that _that_ isn’t where he lived. They are working with what he gave them, however, and determined that Cas must have come from a base on the east coast, and most likely in or close to the northeast. He wishes he could provide more details, but his tongue is still tied around the words.

Kansas, however, remains a target. Once he can remember the man’s name, his partner, his best friend’s name, Cas can go there and find him. He is someone, somewhere, and Cas has to go there. Forget that city, forget that bedroom, forget everything else.

But now, he sits in his room and listens to the radio, half asleep, his mind still a jumbled, tangled mess, trapped in his own memories and blurry words.

He feels like he is stuck in limbo.

The radio switches from a jaunty tune to one that almost instantly draws Cas’s sleepy mind back in time:

He was at the ______, the one he usually regulates to the weekend but his friend was performing tonight, and wanted to support her. It was that club that he always felt relaxed in, and where Cas didn’t feel like a freak.

He had been talking with a man for nearly half an hour by the time Billie gets on _____. They didn’t like each other much at first. The man was only there for his own birthday celebration. He was there to gawk and stare and somehome found his way into a place you needed a code to get into, location hidden

B_____ had started to perform and Cas let the conversation die while they both watched the stage. She performed two songs and people danced. The third song Billie would cover she announced was a partner-__________ and to grab someone up.

“Just like your name,” the man said, sipping from his drink, “You should go ______ the ________ of your people.” He had a smirk on his face that Cas narrowed his eyes at. He didn’t like this man at all.

Cas then drags himself out of his half-sleep with a deep breath. The room is still bright and sunny, not at all in an underground club.

The answer was so close. On the tip of his tongue. He saw a handful of letters pass through his head but nothing that made sense.

Before he loses it, he leans over and grabs the pen and pad of paper.


	6. Chapter 6

**CHAPTER SIX**

**June 18th, 1944**

**Pomona, Kansas**

Dean and John eat dinner in silence.

In the two hours it took for John to make dinner (eventually calling Dean down to help) Dean manages to put back in place the mask he had crafted at such a young age. Every movement he made hurt with the guilt, shame, and horror at Cas—but Dean kept moving, keeping his face frozen and mouth tight.

“Supposed t’rain tomorrow,” John says, mouth full of hash. His father didn’t spice it or anything. Dean feels like he’s chewing softened wood.

Dean doesn’t say anything but continues to eat.

“Rudy told me that Vick quit the other day, you thinkin’ of going down there to ask for—“

“Dad, I don’t want—“

“It doesn’t really matter what you want, does it?” John cuts Dean off, putting his silverware down and pointing a finger, “You’ve been here for a year now and, now, I’m sympathetic to your condition, but there comes a time where a man has to step up, be a man, and start earnin’ some money, especially if you’re gonna get a wife. No one likes a dead beat who got nothing to his name.”

Dean hadn’t heard this argument in about a month and sighs, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. He picks at his food, only able to choke down a few mouthfuls. His stomach is in knots and his mind is a raging storm that he forwent trying to control over an hour ago. There is no use. The mask is all he can find the energy for, and even then, it is a thin one, barely held together.

The last thing Dean wants is to work at Rudy’s. The last thing he wants is to serve the town drunks. The last thing he wants is to spend every night around Lee, especially now. The last thing Dean wants is knowing he’s now stuck in Pomona, Kansas until his heart officially gives out.

“I’m not working there,” Dean mumbles, poking at his plate. He feels John tense next to him and braces for a blow.

“If you won’t do something with yourself, I got no problem lockin’ you out of this house,” John threatens.

Dean hears the words but doesn’t really care. The twisted, demented, dark part of his brain offers the scenario of Dean freezing to death on the side of a Kansas highway. That would be his ticket off of this planet and hopefully to wherever Cas went without having to say “I killed myself” to Cas when they found each other. _Hey sunshine, I’m here! Didn’t kill myself, just let my father kick me out in the dead of winter with no fight whatsoever!_

Sighing again, Dean stands from the table and takes his plate. Sitting there is just too exhausting and all he wants to do now is go back to sleep. Even then, Dean dreads what awaits him in his dreams.

He doesn’t expect to have a restful night ahead.

It is only seven in the evening but Dean feels as if he ran a marathon and a half today with how achy his limbs felt and how numb his head is.

He deposits the plate on the counter and shuffles past the table, away from his father, and over to the stairs.

“I’m goin’ t’bed,” he mumbles, not waiting for a response as he heads up the stairs.

As predicted, Dean hardly sleeps that night.

He first passes out for a couple hours, which feel more like an extended blink than actual rest. When he wakes, it’s dark, and the clock reads 11. All the lights are off downstairs, and there’s rain tapping on his window. There’s a window on the other side of his room still cracked open, but he doesn’t bother to close it. Dean’s laying on his side, frozen, unable to move. He’s afraid to.

It’s dark, quiet, and still.

It’s too dark, it’s too quiet, it’s too still.

Before any of those shadowy thoughts come for him again, his exhaustion pushes him back into sleep.

There, he dreams of walking on a beach. It’s the beach they stayed overnight on during the summer, the spur of the moment trip where they decided to sleep on the sand that night instead of finding a beachside motel. It was the beach that hid them from the world. It was the beach where they undressed each other and let the cool breeze off the water chill their hot skin.

It is that same night, Dean knows it, as he walks. The moon hangs in the same spot, the stars are in the same place, and they are in the same place.

Dean sees them both further along on the beach, only highlighted by the moon that night. He continues to walk, wanting to relive the memory.

But as he gets closer, he realizes it’s not them. It’s only one figure that Dean at first thinks is just a pile of clothing. But it’s a person.

Dread fills Dean’s body, but his feet continue marching forward. He knows what this is and tries his best to steer himself away. No luck.

As Dean gets within a few feet, he sees the trickling of blood from the figure, down the beach sands, and carried out to sea by the small waves from the Sound. He can’t tell that it's red, the dark blue of the night just making it look black. It disperses in the water that moves onto the sand, fanning it out and causing small river branches of it to slide over the rocks as it goes back out to sea.

Dean can’t breathe. He doesn’t want to turn and see the figure. He doesn’t want to turn around and see Cas laying dead in the sand, eyes blank and face pale. He doesn’t want to see him doused in this cold, blue light, extinguishing the golden glow he usually carries with him.

But there’s no choice. As if someone has their hands on either side of his head, Dean is forced to look, his gaze sliding slowly.

His heart jumps to his throat and all breath leaves his lungs as he’s greeted not by Cas laying lifeless on the ground, but a decaying, bloated, bloodied Cas standing upright, only a foot away. His head is drooping but his eyes stare up at Dean, glaring and threatening.

Before Dean can do anything, Cas opens his mouth to say something. Instead of words, all Dean can see is black liquid gushing out, coating Cas’s teeth and spilling down over his chin and onto the sand. Out come small crabs, snapping their claws, and worms, and centipedes, and small snails, fish, seaweed.

Dean finally inhales to scream, closes his eyes, and then opens them again to find himself bolt upright in his bed, his clothes drenched and gasping for air.

He isn’t on the beach. He isn’t on the beach and there is no Cas near him. Dean still glances around his small room tentatively, just in case he didn’t fully wake up. But there are no inexplicable shadows or figures or piles of clothing. However, every time Dean blinks, he sees the image of Cas with his rotting mouth wide open and—

Sucking in a breath too fast, Dean starts to cough as he reaches over to his desk next to him, groping for the light.

He yanks on the chain and his room is doused in a warm, golden light. Dean winces as he picks at his sweaty clothing, sliding out of bed and tossing his shirt and boxers off to the side. His window on the far end of his room is still cracked open, with only some rain bouncing in. The smell of water makes him want to hurl, and he stumbles over to close it. The breeze is cold, and he wipes off any rain droplets that got on him.

Swallowing hard, feeling chilled and clammy standing naked in the middle of his room, Dean draws his arms in and holds himself, swaying from foot to foot. He is too scared to even try to sleep again.

Dean glances at his closet. It takes only half a second for him to decide that he wants to pull out some letters. He needs to hear Cas’s voice in his head. Whatever his memory could remember, Dean needs it. He needs to drown out everything he saw wanting to creep in on him.

He takes his knife, opens the door, and wriggles the paneling out again. Dean takes the whole box with him, pictures, letters, and crude drawings and stories, and takes it with him to his bed.

Any hesitance Dean had over the past week and a half of never looking at the letters again has melted away. The guilt still sits with him, but the need for something to comfort him in any way, shape, or form has ballooned out of control.

He starts from the first letter he got from Cas, the one that he read on the train a year ago as he traveled back to Kansas.

Dean eventually falls into a fitful sleep again.

He had cherry-picked the happier, dirtier letters from the stacks and pointedly ignored the ones that were written from January until now. Those wouldn’t make him feel better.

Eventually, as three in the morning rolled around, Dean had placed the rest of the items back in the box other than those several letters and some of the softer and filthier photos. Dean’s brain had begun to pull him back into the past when the photos were taken, and he wanted to stay there.

He had shoved the letters and photos under his pillow. The light stayed on as he slipped into another dark, dreamless sleep.

When he wakes, it’s just as the sun starts its journey across the sky, about to be masked by the clouds that visited them the previous night. He hears no movement from downstairs, and decides to get up, eat some breakfast, and get to work on the barn sooner rather than later before the rain comes back.

Everything seems more gray that morning, like the vibrancy of the world has dimmed slightly overnight. His food looks bland, the bright green field across the street looks sad, and the bright red barn he has spent a year on looks defeated.

Dean grabs his tools and heads inside of it, eager to get his hands moving.

For safety’s sake, he stays on the ground and finishes the section of painting he has to do there. The decision wasn’t because he was scared of fainting, but the fear he would snap, go back to his original idea, and throw himself off the roof of the barn.

Ten minutes into painting, it all punches Dean in the face with the force of a speeding train.

Cas is gone.

Missing in action means nothing. Cas is gone.

Dean will never have a reason to go back to New York, and doesn’t even think he could if he wanted to. They stomped around that city like it was their own for three years.

Cas is gone, and there is no apology letter Dean could send in response to Cas’s last one. No one would be there to read it. Dean can’t show up on Cas’s front step, or save up money to go over to England and beg for forgiveness. Dean can’t do anything. Cas is gone thinking that Dean didn’t love him anymore. And given that Cas’s own family didn’t care about him, all his friends were merely acquaintances, and he didn’t connect with his fellow soldiers—Cas died thinking no one loved him.

Cas is gone, and Dean can’t even go to a funeral once they find him and bring him back. Michael only ever knew what Dean sounded like, not his name or what he looked like, but they’d know as soon as Dean showed up. They’d know who he is and why he is there.

Cas is gone and there is absolutely nothing Dean can do to bring him back.

A sob that has the potential for being as loud as the one yesterday starts to bubble up in Dean and he presses the back of his wrist against his mouth to hold it in.

The permanence. It is the permanence. He felt it when his mother had died, that suddenly someone who he attached so much of his life to was gone. The expectation she would walk through the door at any minute had crushed Dean well into his primary school years.

Dean has no clue how long this one will take. Losing Mary at the age of four was one thing. But he is an adult now, and things stick around longer.

Cas really was his life, the love of his life, the only thing Dean loved in his life.

Dean can't foresee any point in the future where he’ll be okay.

Confident he won’t scream, Dean finally puts his arm down.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers to the wall. It’s all he can say.

Dean should have known something was off when he didn’t see his father during the time he was working outside. Usually he came out to see the progress or to give Dean another chore—or at least Dean would see him get into the truck and take off.

The smell of the incoming rain kicks up some nausea in Dean as he tries his hardest to forget that image of Cas in his dreams.

About two hours in, Dean sees the first few raindrops hit the dirt outside the barn, and he hears incoming rumbles of thunder. The smell of the storm and water hurt Dean’s head, and he decides to head back inside. Maybe he will clean the guns again.

That thought is nixed as he walks up to the porch, dragging his feet. He shouldn’t have a loaded weapon anywhere near him at the moment.

As Dean opens the screen door and steps inside, he immediately sees his father in the kitchen, sitting at the head of the table. Dean frowns and glances for a moment before bending down to take off his shoes. John has various pieces of paper on the table and Dean figures that John dismantled the paper or something—

No.

Dean walks in further and approaches the table. The papers aren’t from the newspaper, but are smaller letter writing papers, all unfolded and facing the open air. There are seven of them, and Dean can see Cas’s familiar, looping handwriting.

Also in front of his father are three of the photos Dean decided to keep out last night, tucked under his pillow with the letters.

He found them.

Not all of them. But enough.

Pure, unfiltered terror descends over Dean, cementing him to the ground with his mouth going dry. His fingers numb and he can’t draw in a full breath.

John isn’t looking at him and Dean watches as his father continues to read the letters out in front of him. Dean has the idea to turn back around and book it out the door, to keep running until he either dies of over exertion or he reaches a car he can steal.

But he can’t move.

This is the summation of the entire year. These last 24 hours where Dean was basically told the person he loved was killed, and now his father finding the only tangible memory Dean has of him.

John sighs and leans back in his chair, crossing his arms. He finally brings his gaze back up to Dean just as the skies open up outside and a torrential downpour hits the ground hard.

“I can’t believe you,” John eventually says, his voice so low and almost drowned out by the rain outside that Dean has no choice but to step in more to close the door fully.

He doesn’t respond.

Taking it as a cue to continue, John stands and grabs one of the letters by the corner, like touching it would give him a deadly disease.

“I can’t believe you,” he repeats, pointing at the letter in his other hand, “This is what you were doing in New York? This is—this is—“

Dean has never seen his father visibly so upset. The words aren’t stinging, yet, but John’s face is red and Dean can see his hands shaking. He swallows hard.

There is nothing he can say to change the story in his favor. There is absolutely nothing. Dean’s letters to Cas had to be coded like they were written by a woman, but Cas’s letters were all male. Somewhere in that pile is Cas’s attempt at a dirty fantasy, bolstered by Dean’s letters doing so.

The pictures are worse. The pictures are the one of Dean with Cas all the way into his mouth, the other was one that someone took of them on Coney Island on their first trip, and the third was the one that had Dean face down against the mattress, that look of ecstasy the focus of the photo, and also in frame, Cas sliding in slow enough to capture the picture.

“… haven’t you?” John’s voice cuts through his thoughts and Dean refocuses.

“What?”

John’s face morphs into a sneer and takes his other hand and puts it on the letter and tears it clean in half.

The noise rips through Dean like a bolt of lightning, harsh and sudden. He watches as John leans over to grab another one, also tearing it.

“I said, you’ve been doing this since you got back, haven’t you?” John says, reaching for a third letter. Dean’s heart is quickening and he can’t draw in a breath to calm it down. His father tears the third letter right in front of Dean’s eyes and lets it fall to the ground. White-hot anger begins to rise deep in Dean, watching the pieces fall.

“Where are the others?”

The ringing in Dean’s ears grows to a deafening decibel and he can barely hear John, instead focusing on the paper now on the ground. Those carefully crafted letters and snapshots of their life, snapshots of Cas’s life. Those are the only records of Cas left on this earth.

And Dean is just standing and watching them be torn to shreds.

 _Do something_ , his mind whispers faintly, hardly heard over the ringing.

John tears the fourth letter waiting for Dean to answer and now the noise sends a spike of rage through Dean as he brings his attention back to John.

His father goes for a photo, and the hatred Dean has been holding onto now, for the past year, his whole life--the anger that built alongside it--boils over. The ringing sounds like the steam escaping a tea kettle.

In a flash, Dean moves into the kitchen and snatches the letters off the table. They wrinkle in his hand but it’s better than being ripped up. He goes for the photos but John grabs them first, holding all three in his hand. They stand across from each other at either end of the table, breathing hard.

 _You want to make it up to Cas, then you honor him_ , Dean’s brain yells at him, over the ringing, over the rushing of blood in his ears, _don’t let dad erase him._

For the first time in months--a year--Dean’s head clears of the dwindling fog that has clouded it ever since he returned to Kansas.

“Give those to me,” Dean orders, stunned at how low his voice got.

John narrows his eyes and moves his hand, ready to tear the photos to shreds, “I don’t know where everything else is, but I will burn this house down before I let a fag walk through the front door again. You’re a sick freak, you always have been. Never understood why your mother was so attached to you.”

Dean’s vision starts to turn red.

“Now I know why Sam wanted to leave—you were probably forcing yourself on him like the rest of those queers do to other little boys.”

Dean clenches his fists, the papers scrunch together under his grip. He can hardly hear his father over the swelling adrenaline in his head.

“This freak’s in the army too? First I’m gonna take care of you, then I’m gonna give his commanding officer a call. Wait—“

John pauses and Dean realizes that he must have flinched at John’s assumption that Cas was still alive.

“Unless he’s already dead?” John guesses, a smirk arriving on his face, “Well, that makes my job easier.”

Everything peaks inside Dean and the ball of rage morphs helps launch himself at his father as John goes to rip the photos in his hand.

Dean hits the side of John with enough force to throw him into the counter, the photos falling from his grasp. John bangs his head on the upper cabinets and swears, turning around to face Dean. He holds a hand to his forehead where Dean sees some blood trickling through his fingers. He got knocked with the handle.

“You wanna join that faggot down in hell?” John shouts, moving his hand so Dean can see the small gash from the cabinet handle, “Fine by me.”

 _He’s gonna kill you_ , Dean’s brain pipes up unhelpfully.

John always wanted Dean gone in one form or another—and now he has his excuse. Killing a queer would be celebrated, even if it was his own son. Panic shoots through Dean: He isn’t getting out of this house alive.

Lunging at Dean, John has a steak knife in his hand. Not sharp enough to do a lot of damage, but enough. Dean manages to grab his father’s wrist before the knife hits him, but John’s other hand comes up for a punch to Dean’s stomach. The blow knocks the wind out of Dean, and he stumbles back against the counters on the other side of the room. His hands catch him before he hits his head on the cabinets as well. Next to his right hand is a bag of freshly brought flour.

All at once, as John comes back after Dean, Dean spins around and lobs the bag at John, white powder instantly making a cloud around them. John falls to the floor in a grunt, the bag hitting him square in the face. In the spare time he has, Dean moves over to the butcher’s block in the corner of the counter, never taking his eyes off his father, surrounded by flour all over the floor.

John isn’t moving.

Dean isn’t going to fall for it, and grabs the chopping knife. He holds it up, ready to strike as he approaches his father’s body.

 _Holy shit I’m gonna have to kill him_ , Dean thinks wildly.

He moves over to John’s shoulder and nudges it with his foot. Nothing. Dean frowns and moves over to the back of John and kicks his foot. Nothing still. Now on the other side, Dean keeps a distance from his father in case a second wind comes.

However, Dean sees his father’s eyes open, mouth open, and little puffs of flour every time he breathes. But he still doesn’t move. The blood from his head has oozed down into the flour under him and the powder makes him look as white as a ghost.

No, it isn’t the flour that pales John, he really is—

“Dad?” Dean asks, breathing heavy with the adrenaline still pumping through him.

John doesn’t move.

Dean kicks away the knife next to John’s hand, causing it to skate across the floor, and places his own up on the table. Kneeling down, Dean places the back of his hand in front of John’s mouth. There is a breath there, yes, but it is shallow. John’s eyes don’t track Dean’s movements as Dean rolls him over. His father’s body is slack, but there is a heartbeat—faint, but there.

Dean stands fast causing the room spinning slightly as his adrenaline finally comes to a screeching halt. He looks around for John’s keys, finally spotting them by the coffee table. Dean grabs them and then hurries over to John who still hasn’t moved.

A more sinister part of Dean starts to whisper to just let John lay there, take the keys, and run far, far away.

But he can’t.

Cas wouldn’t want him to, even with what John had said about them, or did to Cas’s memory.

“You treat the patient in front of you,” he had said once to Dean over dinner.

“What if they like, spit in your face or call you shit or—“

Cas had shaken his head and shrugged, “Doesn’t matter if it’s Hitler himself—doctor’s oath. You treat the patient in front of you.”

“You could go to jail for treating someone like Hitler though,” Dean countered, shoving the last of his food into his mouth.

Cas shrugged again and finished what was left on his plate, “And Samuel Mudd was thrown in jail for setting Booth’s leg after he shot Lincoln.”

“That’s… that’s the point though,” Dean said, confused, “Why both risk your own life by helping someone out who doesn’t deserve it?”

Turning to Dean, Cas offered a small smile, “It’s not our duty to judge. Every life is worth saving. They’ll be judged later, be it the court or God himself, but our jobs are to save lives—not destroy them. You treat the patient in front of you.”

That conversation plays back through Dean’s head like a clear and

Dean stares at John as the rain lets up outside and Dean hears some birds fly overhead. He sniffs and clears his throat, setting the keys down on the table.

“Just so you know, that ‘faggot’ is the whole reason why I’m not leaving you here to rot,” Dean hisses in his father’s face as he leans down to pick him up.

It’s an hour’s drive to Lawrence Memorial. The entire time, John doesn’t move.

They rush him into the hospital after Dean runs into the lobby yelling for help. It’s all a blur for Dean as he watches them wheel his father away, up the hall, and down for testing. A nice older nurse comes by and asks Dean some questions, and Dean tries to find his voice to answer them.

Three hours later he’s called to his father’s room.

When he gets there, there’s a doctor, a nurse, and his father laying motionless with his eyes closed. There is some kind of fluid going into his arm, but Dean doesn’t bother asking what. His father already looks dead.

“You’re Dean?”

Dean gives what he can of a smile and shakes the doctor’s hand. He is older, has kind eyes, but also feels like the kind of doctor that would tell you how much time you have left to live.

“What’s up, doc?” Dean asks, trying to keep his tone light. The doc looks serious, and Dean swallows hard. This isn’t good.

“It seems that your father had a massive stroke,” the doctor answers flatly, going through the papers in his hands.

“Massive st—what is that?” Dean asks, looking over to his father. He is laying at a slight angle, propped up by pillows. The gash on his head was cleaned and stitched up. John is still pale and taking shallow breaths. He looks like he’s on the edge of death.

“Essentially, your father had a blockage in an artery that fed his brain. He lost blood supply which damages brain tissues by cutting off oxygen and nutrients.”

Dean blinks at the explanation, not fully understanding. He feels like an idiot.

“Does that mean he’s gonna die?”

The doctor puts down the paperwork and frowns at Dean.

“Given the magnitude of how much was blocked, there may be a chance he doesn’t come out of it,” the doctor says, a little more emotion to him this time.

Dean bites his tongue and looks back at his father, dread building in the pit of his stomach.

“We got into a fight just before he fell,” Dean confesses, looking back at the doctor, “I threw a-a fairly big bag of flour at his head. Did that have—“

The doctor shakes his head and lifts up the paper to a different page. “Hard to say for sure, but your father wasn’t the epitome of health. You said to Nurse Martha that he drank a lot? That, combined with poor diet, doesn’t lead to good places. No,” the doctor looks back up at Dean with sympathy in his eyes. Dean doesn’t want it. “No, it’s most likely this was a long time coming. Better that it did while you were home though. You gave him a fighting chance.”

The doctor comes over and pats Dean on the shoulder. Dean almost pushes the guy away.

“We’ll let you know if there are any updates. Ring the bell if there’s an emergency.”

The nurse and doctor leave the room, closing the door behind them, trapping Dean in with his nearly dead father.

He hangs his head and closes his eyes, sinking into the chair. Dean covers his eyes with one hand to block out any additional light, trying to go back to that calming method that Cas had taught him.

It isn’t working.

Tears spring up suddenly, and Dean just lets them escape and fall into his lap. Everything has fallen apart.

Everything.

Dean sniffs and looks out of the window behind him as the sun heads to its western horizon. The last two days were hell. Absolute hell. The last year, in fact, was hell. Dean can’t remember the last time he smiled earnestly, without effort, meaning it.

He glances over to his father again. The man still doesn’t move his position.

 _You make it too hard for yourself_ , Benny’s voice pipes up in Dean’s head. It was what Benny had said last November when he kept trying to get Dean to move on from Cas.

“You make your life too hard for yourself.”

At the time, Dean fought that statement with a shouting match, but now, sitting in the sad and cold hospital room with a sad and cold old man fighting for his life, Dean’s brain catches up.

He really does make his life too difficult. The suffering he experiences can always be avoided.

Instead of answering Sam’s first letter from California, Dean threw it in the trash and ever since then, other than that letter several months ago, he hasn’t heard anything from his brother. It had been so easy to blame him for not making the effort, to blame Sam for getting so distracted and forgetting about his family that he just didn’t care anymore.

But in reality, Dean didn’t try either, too pissed that Sam had decided to fly the coop without him.

Instead of staying in Kansas, saving up money from Rudy’s like he said he was going to do during high school, Dean fled the state. He figured if Sam could do it, then he could do it. Working at Rudy’s and eventually buying a home was the easier way. The less stressful way to live.

Instead of going to that club, instead of speaking to Cas, instead of accepting a lunch invitation—Dean should have just never gone to New York in general.

If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t feel like this.

The pathology begins to sort itself out in Dean’s head as he grabs an extra blanket from the edge of the bed.

If he never left the safety of Pomona, if he settled down with a nice girl, if he got a job at Rudy’s, if he never went to New York just because he could, if he never met Cas, if he never fell in love—

None of this would be happening. The doctor said John was heading for this regardless, but Dean couldn’t help but feel that the doc was only trying to make Dean feel better.

If Dean never fell in love with someone that the general population would view as indecent and sinful, if Dean didn’t make his life harder than it was already, if Dean had said no—

If Dean didn’t fall in love with someone the universe didn’t want him with, then none of this would have happened. Dean was stupid to even try, and now there are two casualties out of it.

Dean wonders if he’ll be the third.

**January 24th, 1939**

**Greenwich Village, New York**

The club Paradise didn’t advertise on the street. There were no blinking signs pointing to it, no windows you could peek through to see a dancing crowd, no bouncer on the street, and certainly no guests milling around outside throwing back champagne flutes.

In fact, if you didn’t know where Paradise was, then you were never going to find it. Its secret location only traveled by spoken word, and you wouldn’t hear it unless you got the trust of the speaker. Paradise wasn’t a club for everyone, and nor did they want to be. Therefore, strangers, begone.

If you were granted passage to Paradise, if someone either took enough pity on your inability to say who you really were as a person, or if they deemed you queer enough, they would say to head to the third alleyway up from Morton Street. The alleyway looked like a short one, but it in fact turned the corner to the left. Those in charge at Paradise put up some boxes, garbage cans, and a partition to obscure the corner. Even then, if you were lucky enough to stumble onto that alleyway, all you’d see at the end of the corner were three back doors leading to the businesses on the ground level, and some trash.

But the second door, the one straight in the middle, was the one where a large man would stand, dressed in all black with a toothpick constantly in his mouth.. If he saw you, and you didn’t have the code, then you had better have your shoes tied because he would chase you out of there.

Paradise only operated on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, but turned a pretty penny.

Once through the door, you found yourself on a landing to a staircase that took you down three full flights of stairs, deep underground. The walls were plastered with concert advertisements, featuring drag queens and other highly made up singers and dancers, or a man with a boater hat on and all white suit with a microphone stand leaning into him, or just cartoons of people dancing, girls with girls and guys with guys.

As you descended those steps, the music would get louder and louder. You’d hear a horn and feel the low vibrations of a bass drum. As you descended to the bottom of the landing, you’d hear everything full force, mixed in with laughter as well.

A woman at the next door would ask for your driver’s license before letting you through.

Once she nodded, the doors would swing open.

There’d always been rumors around the neighborhood of what kind of club it was, but Dean hadn’t paid all too much attention to them. What he did hear was a few college students in line for a newspaper talking about it in giddy, hushed voices. Her friend gave the other one the password, “friend of dorothy”, gave her the general area where the club was, and they both flounced off without realizing Dean was within earshot.

The confirmation of said rumors hit him square in the face, and his stomach had turned itself into knots by the time he reached the red-headed lady at the door.

And what was on the other side of the doors caused Dean to understand that he really, really wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

The club itself was on three levels, like a wide, elongated staircase. At the front of the room was the stage, a small one but a stage nevertheless, framed by dark burgundy curtains. The stage had a small wooden platform that extended out into the audience where people sitting at the nearby tables would be able to reach out and shake hands with the singer or performer. The second level, a slight step up, had a wooden dance floor that took up most of the floor. More tables were set up around it, and off to the edges were golden bannisters to make sure an enthusiastic person in their chair didn’t tumble down.

The third level, the one where the door led you to, was the most spacious with another small dance floor, more tables, and a full bar that pushed itself up against the back wall with the counter extending out from one side, wrapping around the whole bar, and rounding out to the other side.

The walls were the same burgundy color, draped in cloth hanging from the ceiling, which had some faux religious painting on it that consisted of all men, particularly where some women should have been present.

Dean realized in that moment all the rumors he had heard in his two months of living in the West Village were true.

Two people shuffled past him and Dean moved off to the side, out of the way of the door. Part of him wanted to bolt right on outta there without a second look back.

But his eyes locked onto two men on the second level, on the wall opposite where Dean stood, whose faces were attached at the mouth. Dean watched, hypnotized at how slow they were going, only stopping when a waitress came by and gave them a menu.

Dean swallowed hard and made for the bar off to his left.

Everyone sat with everyone, Dean understood in no time. Some were dressed strange, others like they had just walked out of an office. Some girls had skirts, while others had pants and suspenders, their hair cut short. There were men sitting in the laps of other men, same with women, and sometimes they were stretching across each other, eating off each other’s plates, laughing.

It was a completely different world.

There was some music, a couple band members down in the pit by the stage, playing a jaunty tune that some people danced a little to before stumbling over each other, laughing, and pressing up against each other.

“What can I get ya?” a man asked behind Dean, causing him to jump and whip his head around.

“Whoa there buddy—you look like you’ve seen a ghost,” the man said. He eyed Dean warily but grabbed a glass anyway, “What’ll it be?”

“Uh, I’ll have a ward eight, not so much lemon,” Dean answered, sliding himself up onto the barstool. There were old men to his left, turned back around and watching the crowd while sipping on vibrant drinks. When Dean glanced to his right, he saw a man one unoccupied seat over, reading a book with a half empty glass of whiskey beside him. He looked deep in thought, and not at all blending with the energetic crowd around him.

The man looked up to get his drink, and glanced at Dean.

Dean blinked and looked away and gave the bartender only a faint smile when he was handed his drink.

“You don’t look familiar—new?” He asked, sliding a coaster onto the counter. Dean took a sip and was happy the guy listened and didn’t add an exorbitant amount of lemon like everyone else did.

Putting the glass down, Dean nodded. He stared at the bubbles, “Yeah, I moved here two months ago. Wanted to get out and have some fun, I guess.”

The bartender was quiet for a little too long, and Dean glanced back up to a pair of wary eyes.

“How’d you find this place, kid?”

Panic shot through Dean, like he was about to be found out as an imposter and he’d have his knees whacked and be thrown in the East River.

“A friend told me.”

“What’s the friend’s name?”

Dean knew he lost the lying game before it could really get going. He paused for too long and the man took another glass, poured some amber liquid into it, and took a sip—waiting.

Sighing, Dean took another sip of his drink and glanced to the right again. The guy was slumped further over, flipping page after page.

“Some college birds talkin’ about it in line for a paper,” Dean explained.

The bartender rolled his eyes and finishes his own glass in one go, placing it back on the counter, “So why are you here now?”

Dean frowned, “Do I have to have a reason?”

The man smirked and put his hands on the counter, his face close to Dean’s. Dean could smell the whiskey, “It’s my damn club, boy. Name’s Joshua. Why are you here? You look like a bunny that fell into a fox hole.”

The man next to Dean made a noise, and Dean looked over only to see him still slumped over his book. _Who brings a book to a club?_

“It’s my twenty-first, I got no one around here, and this seemed like the place to go,” Dean explained, finishing his drink in one go. He didn’t want to be the only one with a full glass and wanted some liquid courage. Joshua was terrifying despite being a small, thin black man.

For being surrounded by a bunch of fairies, Dean felt very intimidated.

It was exactly like he’d fallen into a fox hole.

“Do you know what kind of place this is?” Joshua asked. He leaned over and took the empty glass from the man next to Dean and filled it to the top again.

Dean didn’t turn around to the rest of the room, terrified that if he did, he would meet the judgmental stares and glares of every other club goer.

“Yes,” Dean mumbled. That was mostly the appeal, if he was honest with himself. There were other places he could have gone to drink himself dizzy for his 21st—but the image of Dolly and the building desire to experience something new, yet something familiar to him, rattled Dean.

They didn’t have places like this in Kansas.

“They don’t have places like this in Kansas,” Dean explains, clearing his throat, making his voice louder.

That was the closest he’d ever get to admitting it. The closest he’d ever get to admitting that there were times in his life where he did look at a boy and wonder—

“You’re from Kansas?” the man next to Dean said, straightening himself out and taking another sip. Dean got a good look at him for the first time. They were probably close in age, but the lighting and the man’s tired eyes aged him slightly. He had dark hair that maybe was once put together neatly earlier in the day, but had since grown a little wild, probably from running his hands through it while reading. Past the tired visage and wild hair were eyes that, despite their exhaustion, shone a bright blue even in the dim lighting.

“Yeah.”

The man scoffed and set his drink down, turning back to his book. Dean frowned, ignoring Joshua who had stood back at this point, taking care of another customer.

“Is there a problem with that?” Dean challenged.

The guy shook his head and Dean thought their small conversation would be over, but the man folded a corner down in his book, closing it. He rested an arm on it, turning back to Dean, glaring, his demeanor icy.

“They use us for target practice out there, and you expected to be welcomed here? We’re not a circus sideshow.”

Dean bit his cheek at the harshness of the man’s words. He wanted to go back to his drink but realized he had drank it all, and Joshua now had the glass in his hand, filling it up while chatting with two older men.

Ideally, this would be the place to say it. Dean couldn’t say it back home unless he, Lee, and Benny were secluded from nosy small-town eavesdroppers. This conversation wouldn’t happen at Rudy’s, and Dean had been honest—there really were no places like this back home.

That was the whole point of moving.

But still, it would be the first time Dean would voice it with confidence, with acceptance, with—

“And how do you know I don’t belong here?” he asked, keeping his frown in place, trying to match the intensity of the man’s glare, “You got a crystal ball or something in that book?”

The man opened his mouth for a comeback, but Joshua came back and gave Dean a refill.

“Enough, Cas. Go back to studying. You’re lucky I even let you in when you have a test on Monday,” he ordered “My place, my rules.”

Dean took the drink and attempted more of a smile. “Thanks.”

The man next to Dean, Cas, sighed so loudly that Dean could hear it over the crowd, and flipped his book open.

Joshua rolled his eyes and winked at Dean, “I’m just giving you a hard time. You clearly belong here. And happy birthday.” After that statement, he walked off to the other end of the bar.

The words stuck in Dean’s head, echoing off of themselves.

He clearly belonged there? What the hell was that supposed to mean?

Dean took a long sip from his glass, nearly draining the thing again. He felt a sudden rush of panic and sadness wash over him. Was he that obvious? Was it ever that obvious? How could it be obvious—he didn’t dress or act like—

Maybe he should leave. Maybe Dean should leave the whole city. Maybe he should try his luck in California with his brother instead. He didn’t belong in Kansas, and he clearly didn’t belong in New York. Sighing, Dean finished the second drink and pushed the glass away from himself. He didn’t want any more.

He just wanted to go home.

This birthday didn’t amount to anything more special than any of his other birthdays. Just disappointment.

But—

Dean saw Cas turn another page and felt the pettiness and anger swell.

“Just so you know,” Dean started, leaning in a little closer. The man didn’t move his head but Dean could see his eyes. “They don’t use us for target practice out there. That’s too quick. They lock us out of our homes instead and let us freeze to death. It’s a lot slower than a shot to the head.”

The memory of stumbling across Garrett McHay was one of the worst ones locked inside Dean’s head and he didn’t know why he had to mention any fraction of it to this stranger. Maybe the alcohol was already getting to him.

“What did they do to you?”

Cas’s voice brought Dean’s attention back. The guy’s face expression as grumpy as it had been several minutes ago, but he still looked cautious.

“What—I gotta have something happen to me to be initiated?” Dean snapped, almost immediately regretting his tone.

He looked down and away, drawing the glass back to him to fidget with.

“No, but everyone has a story,” Cas said, his voice with less of a bite.

Dean huffed out a laugh and shook his head.

“Listen man, I’ve been here for all of a half hour. I don’t plan on telling people my business unless they buy me some dinner first. I’m not giving out my ‘story’,” Dean answers. Joshua looked over to them and Dean raised his eyebrows and tapped his glass. Joshua nodded and held up a finger.

Cas looked Dean up and down, then turned back to his book with a sharp, “Fine.”

Despite him wanting to leave, Joshua came over to fulfill Dean’s request for a refill, this time just whiskey on the rocks.

“Why don’t you stick around, kid,” Joshua said. “I’ll even get you some cake. Candle and everything.”

Dean opened his mouth to say no, but stopped. He couldn’t remember the last time he had cake. And now the owner of the club was offering some for his birthday, a day that Dean hardly ever paid attention to. It had always been treated with little fanfare.

He wanted some cake, dammit.

“That’s mighty kind of you, thank you,” Dean said, finally, third time’s the charm, smiling. Joshua smiled back and moved away, tapping Cas’s book on his way to the kitchen. Cas sighed and closed it.

Dean watched out of the corner of his eye as Cas tossed back the last of his drink. It was weird sitting at one of these clubs with a guy reading a book at the bar, still dressed in a suit and tie.

“Stop staring.”

Dean blinked and refocused his attention forward, feeling some heat run up his cheeks. In a place like this, anything could be considered flirting, couldn’t it? Not like Dean would know. Getting a girl was one thing—finding a guy without running the risk of getting a boot to the dick was a different story altogether.

Swallowing, Dean opened his mouth but was cut off by the sound of applause and the dimming of lights. Good thing. Dean had no idea what he was going to say.

Cas turned around in his stool and Dean copied him.

The stage was now the only thing glowing, and the band down in the pit honked some notes and tapped some drumsticks, warming up. The room died down for only a moment until a tall black woman with shorter hair and a black suit sauntered on stage. Dean was too far away from the stage to see her too clearly, but it was clear that her suit had a sparkle to it, reflecting off the spotlight.

The room erupted into applause and cheers, whistles and laughter. Someone down on the second level banged on the table until a man put his hand over the other’s.

“That’s Billie, sings here once a month,” Cas explained without Dean asking. “Everyone loves her.”

“Clearly,” Dean mumbled as the crowd slowly quieted down with a few remaining claps and one more whistle.

Billie gave the audience a brief pause before easing her way into a smooth jazz number without the instruments. It echoed throughout the club, silencing anyone who thought about speaking now. Dean didn’t even notice when the accompanying band started up to accompany her—she dominated the stage with her voice.

Dean soon found himself hypnotized, only ever having heard scratchy records, warbly radios, and drunken singers at Rudy’s on a Friday night.

This was other-worldly.

The performance sucked Dean in so much, he forgot temporarily where he was. When Joshua tapped lightly on his shoulder, Dean didn’t jump as bad as he had earlier.

“Happy birthday, son, make a good wish,” he said while setting a small cake, probably mixed up in a metal bowl, down in front of Dean with a toothy smile. There was a candle on it, already lit, and the green wax had already begun to sink down into the chocolate frosting.

“You just whipped this out of nowhere?” Dean whispered, turning his back on the performance.

Joshua shook his head, “We got a few pastries still left on the menu, for the time being anyway. You got the last bit, so make it count.”

Dean smiled at Joshua before closing his eyes in concentration. In the back of his head, Billie crooned away, and the rest of the world was quiet. He felt eyes on him, already knowing it was both Joshua and Cas.

 _I just want everything to go right for once,_ Dean thought, squeezing his eyes in concentration as he repeated it three more times.

That was all he wanted.

Just as Billie finished, Dean blew out the candle to a thunderous applause. It wasn’t for him, but it still made him feel a little better.

Joshua clapped him on the shoulder and gave him a fork and knife. Dean thanked him before pulling the candle out of the cake. It still had some frosting coating it. Dean still felt Cas’s eyes on him.

Feeling bold, and drunk, and spiteful all at once, Dean closed his eyes and put the end of the candle in his mouth. He kept it there for a moment as Billie mentioned that the next song was for all “the lovers out there”, and tightened his lips while pulling it back out. The frosting caught on the inside of Dean’s mouth, and the end came out with a barely there “pop!”. He inspected it, making sure he didn’t miss anything

Cas was still watching him, and for the first time in his life, Dean felt confident in his actions.

There was a spot he had missed so Dean opened his mouth slightly, stuck out his tongue, and ran the candle over it, and then pulled it back in _just_ to make sure.

He heard the smallest of annoyed sighs as the band struck up again and Billie’s voice carried back to them lyrics of Fats Waller.

“Here we are, out of cigarettes, holding hands and yawning, look how late it gets,” she sang, and Dean could hear the smile in her voice without turning around.

Cas finally turned away and back to the stage while Dean set the candle down, a smirk on his face.

 _Don’t belong here my ass,_ Dean thought as he took the fork and dug in.

When Billie’s seventh and final song for the night started up, all hell broke loose.

The person was hard to hear over the drums and laughter of people dancing to the beat, but someone eventually whistled over the crowd, and the lights turned on.

For Dean’s part, he hadn’t noticed either.

There wasn’t another drink in his hand, but he had been entranced by the songs—

And Cas down in the crowd talking with a group of people. One of the girls eventually pulled him onto the dance floor, and Dean had been watching how this poor man had no rhythm whatsoever. He was a dork who very much couldn’t dance. That didn’t seem to stop Cas, though. He also was probably fueled by alcohol.

Dean’s eyes were still on Cas when the younger girl came storming through the door and shouted something.

As the crowd quieted down, she cupped a hand over her mouth and shouted “Police!”

Panic immediately shot through Dean, smashing through any sleepiness from the cake and alcohol. He stood as people yelled and grabbed their things, all rushing to the door where the girl stood. She bolted up the stairs first, and soon everyone smashed into each other at the doorway, bottlenecking into the stairwell.

Dean stood back from the crowd, allowing himself to get pushed back to the fringe of the mass of people, at the other end of the bar where leftover drinks were spilt and running off the counter and onto the carpet.

As soon as Dean had heard the word police, his heart took it as a sign to start panicking.

He pressed a hand against his chest and closed his eyes, trying to drown out all the shouts of people trying to get out of the door.

Joshua was nowhere in sight.

_I can’t get arrested I can’t get arrested I can’t get arrested for being here I can’t—_

Dean’s brain started sprinting through thought after thought and Dean felt frozen on the spot.

Just as he was about to make the decision to push through the crowd himself, he felt a hand grab his upper arm.

Convinced it was the police, somehow magically inside, Dean shouted and pushed the hand off, turning around.

It wasn’t the police at all. It was Cas.

“This way. Police won’t go up here,” he ordered, his voice low so others nearby didn’t hear him.

Head spinning a mile a minute with his heart rate to match, Dean nodded while rushing after Cas, pulled now by his wrist.

They headed through two double swing doors and into the now empty kitchen. Cas kept a tight grip on Dean’s wrist as they rounded one corner, then another, and then one more until they reached a door. Before Dean could ask any questions, Cas pushed it open with his shoulder. Revealed were concrete steps going further into the ground.

“This doesn’t seem helpful at all,” Dean argued, but still went along with Cas, who still hadn’t let go of his wrist.

The tell-tale ringing began in Dean’s ears and he faked a yawn to try and pop it. Cas let go of Dean as they descended the steep steps into the darkness. Dean almost slipped but caught himself on the wall.

The stairs took them to an underground storage for food, food that Dean hadn’t seen in a decade, food that shouldn’t be there, food that seemed impossible—

Cas, impatient, once again took Dean’s wrist to pull him away from the stockpile. On the far end of the room was yet another door, this time still opened with a staircase at the other end.

Dean could feel the rush of nighttime air even that far below, and he looked up. Dim lights led the way up, and Cas began climbing without a word. Dean followed, also without a word.

Two flights up, Dean had to pause. His heart started to pound and it got to the point where he had to cough to make sure he was going to keep a steady rhythm, trying to rid himself of the dull pressure. He leaned against the wall, closed his eyes, and coughed once, twice, tried to yawn the blocking of his ears out, and then coughed again.

“Hey. Hey, what’s wrong?” Cas’s voice, filled with as much panic as Dean felt, cut through the dull ringing. Dean opened his eyes to see the man descend back down some stairs and stop on the landing. The worry in his face made Dean want to throw himself off a cliff. His condition was one thing, but the scared worry of strangers always irritated him for some irrational reason. He knew it was irrational. The doctors told him it was irrational, and yet Dean resented them anyway.

He waved a hand, before letting it go limp by his side, closing his eyes again. The stairwell felt small and stuffy, like someone had enclosed him in a box. The breeze from the outside suddenly wasn’t enough, and he found himself struggling to take in air.

Cas stood away from Dean, but watched him. Dean just wanted him gone.

But no, Cas apparently wasn’t going to leave without Dean, and grabbed him again, pulling him up the stairs.

“We’re almost there, you need air,” he grumbled. Dean was sure he was going to die.

The edges of his vision began to darken just as Cas pushed open the final door.

Dean all but collapsed onto the pavement outside. On all fours, he was coughing, trying to swallow, and managed to take in a few breaths of air before coughing again. He heard the door close behind him and a car echo down the alley they were currently in.

“Sit up straight,” Cas’s voice ordered from behind, and Dean looked over to see the panic gone, but worry remaining. Dean turned, cleared his throat, and spat on the ground under him.

“Seriously, sit up. It’s the best way to get oxygen into your lungs and give your heart a break.”

Dean inhaled deep before nodding. He had heard that advice before and Cas had just reminded him. Sit back, straight up, legs out.

With an effort, Dean rocked back onto his heels, keeping his eyes closed while the vertigo passed. He felt Cas’s eyes on him while he slid against the brick wall. Dean wondered if Cas could hear how loud his heart was beating. Yawning again, he still couldn’t hear well. The panic started to swell.

Without a word, Cas sank down onto the ground next to Dean, staring at him like he was waiting for Dean to keel over.

 _The one witness to my death is some dork who reads at bars,_ Dean lamented inside his head, closing his eyes.

As soon as he did, a hand pressed into his chest that was not his. Startled, Dean’s eyes flew back open and he saw Cas had moved closer, sitting on his heels. He had pressed his palm into the middle of Dean’s chest. Not too hard, but it still made a presence.

Dean wanted to protest, but didn’t have the breath for it, so he shot a glare instead.

“Make it move,” Cas ordered, not taking his eyes off Dean’s face. He was still and serious, but Dean didn’t get it. He shook his head and Cas pressed a little harder before relinquishing the weight, still keeping his palm there.

“Take a breath and make my hand move.”

Dean blinked in confusion at the instruction but he took a deep breath anyway. It was too deep, too fast, and there was a pain.

“Hold it,” Cas ordered, still staring at Dean as his hand moved outward with Dean’s chest.

Too tired to do anything about it, Dean held his breath. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears still and now the inhaled oxygen was—

“Let it go.”

Dean did what he was told after a few seconds, all in one go, Cas’s hand sinking back.

Cas nodded, “Close your eyes, focus on that until you feel back to normal.”

And Dean, for reasons passing understanding, did what he was told.

Closing his eyes, he cleared his throat and inhaled, slower this time but still just as deep. He concentrated on the slight weight pushing against him as he held his breath for a few more seconds, then releasing it slower as well.

As Dean kept repeating the motion, he still felt Cas’s eyes on him, watching in case his experiment went wrong and they should have been on the way to the hospital ten minutes ago.

But it was working.

After the fifth time, Dean started to feel some warmth come back to his toes and hands, and his shoulders relaxed against the wall. His hearing came back as the muffled sound of cars driving by started to sharpen, and the ringing dulled to a manageable level.

Dean slowly opened his eyes to a slightly smiling Cas. The hand suddenly vanished and for a moment, Dean wished it stayed. It felt securing, like his heart wasn’t about to fall out of his chest.

“Thanks,” he mumbled, pressing his own hand against his chest, more confident at the lack of vibration. He glanced back at Cas, his face feeling hot in the cold January air, “What are you? Some kind of doctor?”

Cas shrugged and moved to stand, “Kind of.”

He offered his hand and Dean almost knocked it away to prove he could move on his own. But a small voice inside his head whispered, _don’t!,_ so Dean took the hand with a half smile and scrambled back up the wall. His heart still gave a dull thud, protesting the sudden movement.

The silence between them grew awkward fast.

Dean cleared his throat again and glanced over to the street. He just wanted to go home.

“Well, thanks again,” Dean said, giving Cas a little nod.

“Are you going to be okay?” Cas responded, eyeing Dean warily. Dean nodded and patted Cas on the arm, “I’ll be fine. Thanks.”

Dean turned before he said something stupid. Embarrassment was billowing out of control at that point. A stranger had to calm him down like he was an over emotional child, and Dean didn’t like that hit to his ego.

When he got to the street, he didn’t see any sirens or hear any shouting from around the corner, nor did he see an outpouring of people. He frowned, confused.

“Probably a false alarm,” Cas said, coming up behind Dean and looking down the street as well, “Those happen. Better safe than sorry.”

“So I almost died for a false alarm?”

Cas turned to Dean, shaking his head, “You weren’t going to die.”

Dean’s frown deepened as he continued to watch the street corner and avoid that piercing stare, “Sure felt like I was.”

“That’s what they all say.”

“Right,” Dean said, turning, “I’ll see you around.”

Dean got three steps in before he heard footsteps right behind him on the almost deserted street. Turning, he saw Cas walking behind Dean with his hand in his pockets.

“Are you seriously going to follow me home?” Dean asked, walking backwards as Cas continued forward. What if the guy pulled a knife? Then again, Dean realized they both had left their coats in the club.

“My apartment is this way,” Cas said like Dean should have figured that out as soon as he turned around. Rolling his eyes, Dean turned back facing forward, nearly missing a lamppost. “Though clearly you’re a magnet for injury,” he heard Cas mumble behind him.

A moment passed, both of them walking in silence, before Dean turns around again, narrowing his eyes, “Is this how it always is after someone goes to one of those clubs? You never know if you grab a guy, they just follow you home like a lost puppy?”

Cas rolled his eyes, visibly annoyed. “I told you I live in this direction, stop being paranoid. And no, that’s not how it works.”

Dean sighed and turned around one more time, a chill running through him as a deep winter breeze blew through his shirt and pants. He wanted a hot bath and to forget this night ever happened. Clearly mingling with that crowd wasn’t going to be a future option for him.

Lost in his thoughts, Dean slowed his pace enough for Cas to catch up to him, walking alongside him.

The silence again drew uncomfortable.

Unable to stand it, Dean cleared his throat, “What did you mean by ‘kind of’?”

Cas glanced over to Dean then back down, kicking a rock. “I’m still in school—hoping to graduate in the next couple years.”

“So… not at all. You’re not a doctor at all.” Dean couldn’t help but smile, feeling calmer finally and what alcohol didn’t burn in the adrenaline rush coming back to his head. Cas looked completely different than he had back in the alleyway. There, he had been a serious doctor, medical professional—but now he was just a student kicking a rock down the sidewalk with a country bumpkin.

“I guess I’m not,” Cas mumbled. The rock jumped in front of Dean’s path and he gave it a kick as well. They both watched as it tumbled down the pavement in front of them.

Dean heard something akin to sadness in Cas’s response and looked back over to him. The man’s face was back to looking like he was ten times older than he actually was, lines pulling at his frown with tired eyes.

“I mean—you’re more of one than I am,” Dean commented, trying to make the conversation a little lighter, “I don’t think I know anyone who ever went to college, let alone medical school.”

Cas opened his mouth to say something, closed it, then opened it again taking a breath, “I’m sorry what I said back there—about target practice.”

Dean paused, taking in the apology, remembering the swirling storm inside his head earlier.

“You’re not wrong, though,” Dean said, his turn to kick the rock. “This place terrifies me, but it’s better than the alternative.”

It still wasn’t a full out answer to what nagged Dean, what ate away at him—but it was close enough. Out of the corner of his eye, Dean saw Cas nod.

The guy was alright.

After a couple more minutes, walking in a more comfortable silence, they arrived at a beige brick building on an intersection.

“This is me,” Cas pointed up at the door. Dean paused, laughed, looked up at the building. When he brought his gaze back down, he saw Cas frown in confusion.

“That’s me,” Dean answered, pointing diagonally across the intersection to a darker brick apartment building he had been occupying for two months.

The frown instantly vanished from Cas’s face, and in its place, a surprisingly warm smile appeared that Dean wouldn't have pegged the man of being capable of.

“You lived that close and I’ve never seen you until tonight?”

Dean shrugged, “I only moved in on December first. Haven’t really gone out and done anything.”

Cas nodded in blank acknowledgement before sticking out his hand again, “It was nice to meet you—I don’t know your name.”

Dean smiled as he took Cas’s hand. “I’m Dean. Dean Winchester. Nice to meet you.”

“Like the gun?”

“Yeah, like the gun,” Dean laughed.

Cas smiled at the laughter, and Dean had already decided, within knowing this man for only a few hours, that the smile was one of the best things he’d seen since moving to New York.

“Hello, Dean, nice to meet you,” Cas said, voice lighter than it had been all evening. “I’m Clarence Castiel Charleston, but you can just call me Cas.”

Dean eventually let go of Cas’s hand and gave him a polite wave, turning to cross the intersection.

“Hey!”

Cas’s voice caused Dean to spin back around, nearly walking into a trashcan.

“Happy birthday,” he said, the smile still on his face as he didn’t wait for Dean to respond, turning into the door and shutting it quietly behind him.

Two days later, they shuffled together into the same bagel shop, pushed in with the morning crowd.

Dean didn’t realize he was standing next to Cas until he heard the man’s voice in his ear, “I have your coat.”

Jumping, Dean turned as much as he could without knocking someone over and saw Cas’s face directly over his shoulder, staring at him.

Dean had spent most of the weekend debating on even trying his luck at Paradise again. He wanted his coat back—it was one of the most expensive things he owned—but at the same time, the thought of returning to that dimly lit, crowded, stuffy club with the memories still fresh from Friday made Dean’s heart speed up slightly.

He had still been formulating a plan up until Sunday night on how to ask for it back, but gave up and opted for sleep instead.

Dean turned back around and shuffled forward with the line.

“Do you have it with you now?” He asked, trying to ignore how close the guy was to him. Once the booze and adrenaline had worn off Friday, Dean had replayed every scenario from that night in his head. He had tried to spin it in a good light, that he wasn’t a bumbling idiot who looked like the nerd during gym class who couldn’t run five feet without collapsing, without looking like a clumsy idiot who couldn’t keep his own feet in front of him, who didn’t look like fresh meat in this new world that he had wanted for years to explore, but now felt like he wouldn’t be welcomed there either.

“No, but after this I can run up to my place and get it,” Cas answered, keeping his voice low.

Dean frowned in confusion as they inched forward, “I can just stay on the sidewalk outside and wait.”

A pause.

“That’s what I said,” Cas said, and Dean replayed the statement in his head, and bit the inside of his cheek.

“Sorry, crowded in here, I misheard,” Dean said, understanding that Cas was only inches behind him and well within listening distance. “Yeah, that sounds good. Thank you.”

He was happy his face was pointed in the other direction so Cas didn’t see it.

A week later, Dean found his courage.

Friday night came, and after days of pondering the pros and cons, writing them down even, Dean decided to go back to Paradise.

The thing that got him in the end was, of all things, a truck coming into the shop that looked like his father’s back in Kansas. It was years old, rusted, and hardly still workable. If his father wasn’t a thousand and some miles away, Dean would have thought he had shown up in New York to take Dean back.

But the car knocked something loose in Dean’s brain as he worked.

He had moved out of Pomona for a reason.

He had always planned to, but his brother got to leave first, riding a scholarship paid by his girlfriend’s father, just as they were conveniently moving to California.

Growing up, Dean never had any grand ideas of his future other than he was pretty sure he’d be choking on prairie dust until his heart gave out at the tender age of forty.

When Sam left, Dean was hit in the face with the knowledge that if he didn’t take action, he would be setting into that life he always thought he had to have. But it took Sam leaving for Dean to realize he had a choice.

His first thought was the Army, but that was squashed almost the instant it sprang up. They would never let him join in his condition.

His second thought was going back to school and graduating with something that could get him into a decent college—which made him laugh. Dean didn’t think he was the stupidest in town, but he didn’t think he’d be the smartest among college applicants.

There was also the small problem of money.

The third option was to just leave. John couldn’t really stop him if even he tried. Dean was twenty and there was no reason for him to keep living on that deteriorating farm.

Slowly, over the course of a few months, Dean took shifts at Rudy’s sporadically to save up some coin. Then, in the dead of night after Thanksgiving, he bummed a ride off Benny to get to the train station.

Dean chose New York to land. He wanted to shock himself out of a wasted, sleepy life; he wanted to experience people and not just bodies walking around, acting as if they were already dead—

He wanted to feel free and to explore.

And sitting in his apartment every weekend wasn’t doing him any favors.

That Friday, he decided he would go back to Paradise, come hell or high water. But that was only one part of the courage coin. Dean also didn’t want to go alone.

Each night, Dean had watched the intersection from his window, close enough to the corner of the building where he could still see the front door to Cas’s. He had waited to see when Cas usually arrived back at the apartment. Each time he looked, and stayed for a couple hours, Dean never saw him.

But that night, he was going to try.

He wasn’t spineless.

He was scared shitless of asking a guy out to a place, even if it was just purely for company in case Dean got rattled again—but he was still scared shitless.

However, once eight rolled around, Dean grabbed his wallet, a lighter jacket, key, and practically ran out of his door before his feet decided to carry him back in on second doubts.

Cas was at home and answered when Dean rang the bell.

He agreed to go.

The night went by in a blur for Dean, riding a high that he hadn’t felt before in his life. They sat at the bar like the previous week. Joshua greeted them, gave them their first round free. They sat next to each other instead of one stool apart. Not much talking happened between them other than the basics, mostly just recapping the week: “Had to give a presentation,” “Worked on some rich fella’s car and was half tempted to take it.” They remained quiet as Dolly the Drag Darlin’ put on a show that rivaled Billie’s in terms of vocals. Dean noticed Cas’s foot tapping while the rest of him remained still.

They had another round of drinks during intermission.

Not one book was in sight.

That Sunday, Cas came by and rang. He wanted to know if Dean wanted to go out for lunch because he was getting sick of his bland food.

Dean agreed without much hesitation, surprising himself.

They went to Rocco’s where Cas swore they had some of the best food—a place only known by locals.

They arrived; their food came after some more light conversation, “How are you liking New York?”, “It’s okay. I still have to get used to only seeing a fraction of the sky every time I look up.”

Dean took one bite and squinted, looking at Cas. Cas, mid-bite, paused and asked if anything was wrong. Dean took a forkful of shepherd’s pie and analyzed it.

“I can do better than this.”

Cas scoffed, “Put your money where your mouth is.”

That night, Dean invited Cas over for dinner. He was embarrassed by the lack of things in his place, but Cas said he didn’t care. A short time later, they both ate in silence with the radio on behind them.

Not a crumb was left behind.

“I know you want to know.”

Cas looked up from his book that Dean had learned was his medical textbook from school.

“Want to know what?” he asked.

The band was solo that night at Paradise and they played some lively tunes while people danced.

It was a month and a half after they met, and Dean and Cas now had their own spot at the bar, reserved by Joshua himself. It was at the end, past the curve, closest to the entry but tucked into the shadows. They had their privacy, and Cas had the room to actually spread his work out and study on a Saturday night like the dork he was. But it was strangely endearing to Dean.

“You’ve been pretty close to asking me all week why we had to go back to my apartment instead of down to the seaport. And now, even though you’re hiding it,” Dean leaned over and picked the textbook out from under Cas’s hands, “you’ve been on the heart and lungs section of this thing for the last three days.”

Cas frowned and reached for the textbook, which Dean gave back without a fight.

“I didn’t want to pry,” he said, folding over the corner of the page and closing the book. He picked up his drink and took a sip while Dean watched. Putting the glass down, Cas looked over, confused.

“What?”

“So?”

“So what?”

“So ask,” Dean explained, rolling his eyes. He took a piece of the pie they had been sharing and shoved it in his mouth, glancing over to a loud couple, two girls, who were laughing hysterically at a guy trying his damned best to dance on rhythm.

“Fine,” Cas conceded, turning fully to face Dean, placing one foot on the bar below Dean’s seat and the other on the rail under the counter. “Why do you seem to have the heart of an eighty year old man in a twenty one year old’s body?”

Dean laughed as Cas tilted the stool back and forth with his foot.

Clearing this throat, Dean sobered up and turned to face Cas directly as well, back to the stage.

“When I was fourteen there was a pretty bad storm that came through,” Dean started, Cas’s eyes on him like a spotlight. Dean suddenly realized he had never had to tell this story to anyone before. It felt strange to think back on it now.

“It was the next day and my father and brother and I were all outside cleaning up. Some of the animals got loose, we thought a tornado touched down somewhere in the field next to us—and so we had a lot of sticks and wood and shingles to pick up. The barn was trashed—still is—and there was a lot to do.”

Dean sighed, looking down, away from Cas’s intense stare. It was still an adjustment when he did that.

“Well anyway—I had an armful of stuff in my arms and was walking over to the burn pile which was by the barn. I had to cross in front of the house to do it because the back, between the house and field, had too many panels of wood and garbage blocking the way.

So I walked, only able to see what was right in front of me, not where I was stepping—“

“Dean—“

“There was still a puddle of water in front of our porch—the dirt road basically was our front yard—there wasn’t grass. And I stepped in it, not realizing that a live wire was ripped down with the end in the water.”

Silence greeted Dean and he looked back up once he realized Cas wasn’t toying with the barstool anymore. Cas’s eyes were wider than usual, and the frown was back. Dean hated that frown. He didn’t want to continue, but it was vital that Cas did understand—

Plus it did feel good for Dean to tell the story to someone else.

“I can’t remember much after that. I was barely conscious in the truck and the next thing I knew, I woke up in a hospital bed three days later.”

Cas breathed out sharply and looked away, shaking his head. Dean kept his eyes on him.

“I don’t remember much about what they said, only that my dad said I fell out of the water almost immediately, and that the doctors said I was in such good health that the shock didn’t kill me. So—“

“So you have an irregular heartbeat now?”

Dean nodded as Cas looked back at him. The frown was still there but he could see the medical student in Cas processing through the information.

“It’s a miracle you survived,” he eventually said.

“Yeah, I heard that a lot back then,” Dean grabbed Cas’s drink and finished it off as Joshua approached to give them refills. “Though you gotta ask what kind of miracles is God ignoring to bring back fourteen year old boys who really have nothing interesting to add to His green earth.”

Cas kept his frown, narrowing his eyes at Dean.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Dean said, turning back and grabbing the fork again. Cas softened his face and turned back to the counter, opening the book again.

Cas waited until they were walking back to their respective apartments to ask the question that damn near put Dean into actual cardiac arrest.

“So, with your condition, what kind of physical activity is off limits for you?”

Dean thought for a moment.

“Marathons are out of the picture, not like I cared anyway. I can walk a lot but not fast—depends on the weather. I’ve never ridden a bike so I don’t know if—“

“Is sex still an option?”

The question hit Dean’s brain immediately and he almost tripped over his own two feet, wanting to stop and process the question but also keep walking next to Cas.

“Uh—yeah. I mean… yeah,” Dean fumbled over his words.

Cas looked at him with a thinly veiled air of innocence, “I just meant, you seem like the kind of guy who would… what’s the phrase? Chase a lot of tail?”

Dean wanted to laugh, but the heat rising to his cheeks also melted his jaw shut. He nodded.

It wasn’t a lot, only three girls, two of them woefully disappointing and the third one, Robin, had moved to Seattle with her mother once her father died so it was a one-and-done deal.

Cas nodded along too.

They kept walking, the silence between them tense and—not awkward, Dean realized, but—

“Speed though, how fast?” Cas asked after a couple minutes. Dean held himself together better that time but now his imagination, already fat and happy on alcohol and pie, was envisioning himself and how fast he could go with—

“I mean… fairly? Maybe?”

It was hard, very, very hard for Dean to figure out what he was doing.

He had never had to flirt with a man before. The crush Lee had had on him wasn’t anything of his doing, and Dean had never acted on it, knowing better than to stick his dick in local scandal. He didn’t have experience with this.

What was flirting with men supposed to be like? Was this it? Did Dean have to have the magic password still?

He had had two crushes on boys growing up, but ever since he’d found Garrett McVeigh in the ditch, frozen to death because his father kicked him out and told everyone not to let him in,Dean was so used to pushing down any, _any_ urges or desires or—

“It depends, I guess,” Dean corrected himself, the nerves shooting straight to his heart, but he held onto the reins. “What’s your definition of fast?”

Two weeks later, Dean asked Cas out for dinner and to catch a show. A proper date. It was at a safe restaurant, one in “the know,” one in the “community,” and they both felt at ease.

Cas confessed that he liked Dean.

Dean confessed that he liked Cas as well.

On the walk home that night, just before Cas’s apartment building, he pulled Dean into a side alley, pushed him against the wall, and kissed him so intensely, Dean didn’t think his legs would carry him across the way back to his own apartment.

The following night they spent together, safe and warm in bed while a late-March snow storm passed over the city.

They didn’t plan on it, though Dean would be lying if he said he hadn’t been thinking what it would actually be like. He had wondered if maybe that imagination had started back on the first night they met, but his brain didn’t want to provide him with the details.

All that mattered was that he wanted it now, and so did Cas.

Both confessed to never having been with another man before, which broke the awkwardness. They didn’t really know how to get started, but once Dean switched on the radio as a precaution to drown out any potential noises, the tense silence broke and it all snowballed from there.

They didn’t go all the way like Dean had thought about for a few weeks, but it was still more than he could have ever dreamed. And he had dreamt, ever since he realized his preferences, what it would be like.

The nerves didn’t last long as their clothing laid abandoned on the floor next to Dean’s bed. It was bigger than Cas’s but not as comfortable—but neither of them cared.

Lacking total provisions for anything, and still hesitant to push anything too far, they opted to move against each other, pressed together and hidden away from the night under Dean’s bedspread. The radio continued to play in the other room, slower songs for the evening crowd.

For all the fear he had growing up, thinking about this time, should it have ever come, Dean fell into it easily. Finding a rhythm was easy, letting someone on top of him was easy, keeping himself calm enough to enjoy the experience was easy.

And it was far, far better than any time he’d been with a woman. The appreciation for a deeper voice and slightly rougher actions grew in Dean as they ran their hands and mouths over each other.

It was exciting, thrilling, and intoxicating, and Dean wondered what the hell ever took him so damn long to seek it out. One of the new things he learned was his strange desire to be handled. Not pushed around, not ordered around, not treated like second best, but manually positioned and laying under someone for the first time in his life. Judging by Cas’s enthusiasm and the noises escaping his mouth, he enjoyed it as well.

It felt good having someone know what it is that other men liked, almost like it was the simplest thing in the world. Hands twisting and pressing against certain areas of the body, all the while a mouth finding that one particular spot where neck met shoulder and grazed lightly with teeth. Rocking together, to the beat of the music, to their own breath, came to them easily, like they unlocked the dormant knowledge as soon as they slid into the sheets.

But the best part—

The best part was the end. It confused Dean since he had gone through life with the presumption that the act was more pleasurable than reaching the finish line, having nothing else to work for.

They reached the end together, another first for Dean, and he felt a tidal wave of warmth wash over him as he pulled Cas closer to him, their hips slowing against each other to draw it out as much as possible. Their skin had grown hot, making up for the lack of heat in Dean’s apartment, and Dean could feel the dull ringing come back into his ears while he tipped over the edge with Cas. But it didn’t panic him; he felt his heart rate escalate but it wasn’t alarming—

And as he clung to Cas in their final movements and breath together, he finally felt that for the first time in his life he was going to be okay.

Dean’s attention blurred as Cas eased himself not completely off of Dean, but enough so his full weight didn’t collapse into him. The radio continued to croon as their breathing slowed, and the ringing faded away in Dean’s head. Cas had melted against Dean, and Dean could feel a slight brush of eyelashes against his neck and Cas mouthed his shoulder.

They had only been done for a few minutes and Dean wanted to go again. Sighing, he pressed a hand to his chest to make sure he was doing okay.

“Are you alright?” Cas asked almost immediately, leaving Dean’s side and lifting himself up on his elbow. He stared down at Dean with such a comically concerned expression, Dean smiled, holding back a breath of laughter.

“I’m good, cowboy, you didn’t kill me.”

Cas rolled his eyes but sank back down. He didn’t latch back onto Dean’s shoulder or neck but still pressed himself close.

“Well then clearly I didn’t try hard enough,” he mumbled, and Dean did laugh at that while taking a hand and running it across Cas’s arm that still laid across him.

They remained still for another minute while thoughts, previously on hold, started to pile back up on him. He had a lot to say but didn’t know how to say it. Pillow talk was never his forte.

“I’ve wanted to do that for a while now,” Cas said, voice drowsy. Dean’s limbs felt heavy, and he couldn’t move, but the weight of Cas felt comforting in a way.

“Yeah? For how long?” Dean asked, feeling the exhaustion settle in as well. The warmth was trapped with them under the covers, and feeling Cas’s breathing slow next to him relaxed any remaining tension Dean had.

“Ever since you stuck that damn candle in your stupid mouth,” Cas answered, halfway to dreamland. Dean didn’t laugh at the answer, but smiled to himself while closing his eyes.

They fell into a deep sleep, tangled up together, and not moving an inch for the rest of the night.

Come June 1st, they moved into a small apartment on Christopher Street together.

The rest, you could say, was history.

Cas wakes from his nap to birds chirping and the sun shining again. He frowns, groggy, and blinks at the brightness. The nap went too long, and no one came to wake him for his afternoon walk.

Not like he cares too much. Walking still hurts.

But there is a reason why he forced himself out of sleep, and he closes his eyes again to try and remember.

As usual, he had one of those annoyingly vivid dreams that taunt him more than help him, but the salient details were escaping him right then.

Sighing, he presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and rubs until he sees stars bloom against the dark. Birds chirp outside, and he hears people yelling and laughing in the yard below his hospital window.

But that didn’t wake him up, Cas knows that. It was something else.

It wasn’t light—it was dark. It was dark but there was some light, dim light, and a spotlight on a ____. Someone was singing. The man sat next to him, Cas slowly remembers, and they were at a counter of some kind. A ___? A b____.

They were talking, but Cas can’t remember the words. He and the man are younger than they had been in his dreams. An older black man comes over behind the counter, handing them drinks. They knock them together before slinging the drinks back.

And—

_What. What are you missing?_

Cas wants to yell out of frustration, but instead opens his eyes again and squints at the sunlight. The dreams are getting harder to remember, scaring Cas. He doesn’t want the one link he had to his life to fade away without giving him all the answers he needs to get back to it. It sometimes feels like trying to hold water in cupped hands.

Sighing, he turns to his bedside table and gets his notepad and pen.

Over the previous two weeks, Cas developed a habit of writing down any word, anything, any thought he could tangibly write, down on paper. Something someday was going to add up.

Cas pauses before letting the pen touch the paper, letting his hand move in little directions to draw swirl patterns against the paper, next to random words like water, island, city, and sunset. His writing has improved over the weeks, but it still isn’t like how he used to write. He knows that.

After a couple minutes, Cas decides to practice writing the three letters of his name that he knows, trying to practice his lettering more. It was also the only breakthrough that he had in the last two weeks. It was all he had to cling to.

Cas watches as his hand moves in its repetitive motion. C A S, C A S , C A S, C—

L A

Cas pauses, frowning at the new letters.

After a moment, he repeats them.

C L A C A S C L A C A S

C L A R E N C AS D

Cas stops again, holding his breath. He stares at the letters like they are going to take his pen and finish writing for him.

The rest of the letters are at the very tip of his tongue, the very forefront of his mind. He can see their blurry outline. They want out.

Cas puts his pen back on the paper, and closes his eyes.

C L A R E N C A S C D E H A S L E R N A C E E I L L C A S D E

Gibberish, but Cas knew there was something in there.

So he keeps at it.

C L A R A C A S C S T O N S C L A R E N D E C E S T O N

C A S C L A T I E L S T O N D N E

C L A R E N C E S T O N C A S T L E N C E E D

Cas backtracks and stops his pen after the second E. He squints at the letters before it for a moment before he allows his hand to move, circling C L A R E N C E.

Not stopping, Cas’s hand moves over to the three letters he already knew: C A S.

Staring at the other lines of letters, he sees another similarity to circle: S T O N.

Cas hardly moves a muscle, letting the pen slip out of his hand while he gapes at the paper, mouth slightly open. It was the most progress he had made in weeks.

The crack in the dam suddenly relents to the pressure, and all at once, Cas hears himself speaking to the man outside a building in that city, late at night. There’s no one around them. Cas remembers taking the man’s hand and introducing himself as—

Clarence Castiel Charleston.

It takes the army two days to find Cas’s home address in Connecticut and hunt his belongings down in Weymouth which they say they will ship over.

Cas knows the address wasn’t his most recent one, knowing that the home that popped up in his memories surrounded by a lush green lawn and fading fall foliage was not where he lived with the man but, dammit, it was a start.

As he packs what few belongings he acquired while staying at the hospital, Cas pauses at the notebook with all the letters scribbled out.

There was one that didn’t belong there.

A “D” wasn’t anywhere in his name.

Before he packs it away, Cas takes the pen and circles the one letter and puts a star next to it.

Without a shadow of a doubt, Cas knows he finally has a lead to who it is that he needs to return to.


	7. Chapter 7

**CHAPTER SEVEN**

Dean is sleeping when John passes on.

It was the first amount of rest Dean has seen in forty-eight hours, ever since they arrived at the hospital. It was still a shallow rest, Dean sinking into the chair with his arms folded over each other, letting his head drop a little. He had tried to fight it but eventually, pure exhaustion won over.

His dreams were fitful, consisting only of dark shadows and the feeling of dread passing through him at every turn.

When the doctor shakes him awake, Dean already knows what happened. What little, small, tiny, minuscule spec of hope he had left for anything going right in his life, shattered.

He never saw his mother’s body, saw her carried out by anyone, saw a sheet go over her face while nurses wiped her face with water.

She was killed in a fire.

Dean was spared the optics.

But now, he stands by and watches as several people work on his father, unhooking him from IVs and lowering his mattress down so he lays flat.

His lifeless face is covered with the thin hospital sheet. With the lighting, Dean can still see the shadow of his father’s face, making him look even more ghostly.

John is wheeled out of the room, nurses and doctor with him, leaving Dean alone.

And that was that.

When they had first gotten to the hospital, Dean had called Sam once the doctor gave his diagnosis. He hadn’t spoken to his brother in five years.

When Sam picked up the phone, Dean did all he could to try and not break down over the line at finally hearing what was once a friendly voice, someone who was outside the small pit of hell that was the midwest and wasn’t attached to all this mess.

Sam didn’t say much other than “Hello” when he first picked up. Dean didn’t give him much of an option to. He knew Sam was itching to remark on the situation, or ask if Dean was okay as if John wasn’t his father too—but Dean didn’t let him.

John had died a day before Sam was set to arrive.

Dean doesn’t want to go back to the house, and the only plan John ever had for his death was to be buried in Lawrence next to his family, so Dean stays in town.

He calls Rudy’s, says a silent prayer of thanks that Lee doesn’t pick up, and tells Roy to tell the bar what happened.

They would be out by tomorrow morning for the burial.

And that was that.

Things operate both in slow motion, and all at once, in Dean’s mind, and he realizes as they lower John into the ground that he doesn’t remember much from over the past three days. Or the last two weeks. Or months—

He stands there as a priest says some words and his father’s friends bow their heads in respect. Sam follows suit, but Dean keeps his up.

The only memories from the last year that come back to him are every instance he hid in his room, too scared to make a noise while trying to hide Cas’s letters, too scared he’d slip up and say what he was doing in New York,going days without speaking because his father wasn’t home or just didn’t talk to Dean, making food for them both while his father refused to eat half of it and then wasted it, desperate for some other human contact—

Dean doesn’t bow his head or say “Amen.”

His father didn’t deserve that respect.

And that was that.

Dean doesn’t want Sam back at the house, and Sam doesn’t fight it.

Things are awkward between them as they sit at a diner, waiting for their meager breakfast to show.

“How’s California,” Dean eventually asks, staring at the table and picking at his napkin. He doesn’t really care about the answer, but he figures he should ask. In the five years apart, Sam had grown taller, learned how to finally dress himself properly, and seems more sober and serious than before—which is saying a lot. The kid was practically born with a stick up his ass.

“It’s good. Fine,” Sam says, staring at Dean in that annoying way that always made Dean feel like every detail of his life was under a microscope, “How’s—“

Sam paused and Dean squinted, “Uh oh.”

Sam nods and looks away, “Yeah, I had nowhere to go with that, huh?”

Shaking his head, Dean can’t help a small smile. It doesn’t last long, but it’s there, and it’s the first time he thinks he’s smiled in—he can’t remember.

“But seriously,” Sam says, that annoying stare back in place at once, “How are you?”

Dean sighs, going back to the napkin.

“I am in no way able to answer that question right now.”

Sam nods and they lapse back into silence as their food arrives shortly after.

And that was that.

Dean returns to Pomona alone.

Sam offers to go back with him, but Dean knows he doesn’t actually want to go back.

Sam offers to take Dean back to California with him, but Dean knows he doesn’t want him there.

Maybe there will be a time and place when they fix whatever it was that broke between them, but now isn’t it.

Dean waves as Sam drives off. He waits for the regret to sink in, for him to want to grab the keys and follow, leaving the house, the letters, the past behind and starting again.

But it never comes.

As Dean drives in the opposite direction, back to Pomona, he realizes it’s because Sam managed to do what Dean couldn’t: get out, get free, and stay free.

By the time Dean gets back to the house, the sun is on its descent into the horizon. Long shadows extend from the house and barn, reaching the field behind the house. Cicadas and crickets start up their evening symphony, and there’s a slight breeze to the air. For once it’s not hot and uncomfortable.

Dean stands outside the truck, staring at the house.

The fading light makes the inside of the house look darker, and Dean, staring at the windows, half expects to see his father still standing there, face frozen like it was when he died.

Dean then expects to see Cas, the same he did that night in his dream, watching him from his bedroom window with his mouth still open in a scream that could never come before he was most likely shot and killed.

Sighing, Dean closes his eyes to shake the projected image out of his head.

There are no ghosts, no corpses following him around. No one is coming back to haunt him—only in his head. The scariest thing now in Dean’s life is the loneliness, and that is ten times more terrifying than his father or Cas springing up out of the ground.

At least then Dean would have company.

While he cleans the kitchen, Dean decides to burn the letters and photos.

He had taken the crumpled paper and the ripped ones and set them aside without looking. Picking the photos up, he glances at one. The one. The one that had made Dean hurt for a year every time he looked at it. The one that unless he were to go back to that point in time and witness that it was really himself, wouldn’t have believed it was him in the photo.

That time is done.

Dean holds it together while he pushes the photo over to the pile of ripped letters on the table. While he sweeps the flour off the floor and puts the knives back in their places, he tells himself to burn it all. No trace of any of it. Benny’s reminder to Dean that he made everything harder for himself echoes in his head, and that’s what seals the deal.

Holding onto it all _would_ be like allowing a ghost to live in the home with him, causing him nothing but misery. There’s no point to it anymore. No one is coming home. No one is left.

Dean takes a sack that once housed potatoes and takes it upstairs with him. His footsteps seem to echo all around the house and in his head.

At the top of the dark landing, he doesn’t turn to the right to look down the hall. The fear still hasn’t left completely yet, and Dean is still scared he’ll see something he doesn’t want to see.

He pushes the door open to his room and turns on the lamp, seeing everything as he left it three days prior. It feels foreign to him, despite being his bedroom since the day he was born. The bed looks strange and the desk seems wrong and out of place. The haze in his head hasn’t lifted and Dean attributes the feeling of wrongness to that.

Without hesitating, he drops the sack onto the floor, goes to the closet, and pulls the paneling out again. The box of letters waits for him like they always have, happy and eager to be read again. Dean instead grabs it, takes it over to the sack, and throws the box and all its contents inside. He then moves to the desk, taking the rest of the paper and throwing it inside as well. Numbness has taken over, and Dean moves without focusing on what he is doing.

Half of him, deep down, thinks this is all still some extended nightmare and that he’ll soon wake up in bed with Cas next to him, all while—

_Stop it._

Dean takes a deep breath, closes up the sack, and turns to make his way out of the room when he remembers—

One letter remains. The letter that came to him two weeks ago and that he stuffed in his mattress. Cas’s goodbye letter that Dean thought, at the time, was the most heartbreaking thing he’d have to experience.

Swallowing hard, his throat hurting, Dean drops the sack by the door and heads back over to the bed. He pulls the mattress up and sticks his hand between it and the bedframe, groping around for the cut in the fabric—

His hand sinks into the rip and comes in contact with the paper. Not caring anymore about preserving the creases or making sure the words don’t fade and rub against each other, Dean closes his fist around the page and brings it out.

It feels like a ton of bricks in his hand.

Dean had every intention of bringing it back to the sack at once, but finds he can’t move. He made the mistake of looking down at it, catching some words on display, and his feet freeze.

_Don’t read it—_

He sits on his mattress. One last look.

_Don’t—_

It was only one more look, one more reason for Dean to do this, one last confirmation that it’s all gone, dead, buried—

Dean uncrinkles the paper and starts to read it again for the first time in two weeks:

_June 1st, 1944_

_To D,_

_I’ve received your last letter, and I want to make it clear that I don’t blame you. Even a week apart is hard, six months is worse, and there’s only so long either one of us can go before something breaks. Truth be told, I’ve been expecting this. My only wish was that you told me when it first happened. Withholding the truth is what hurts the most._

_Whatever role I had in your life, I hope it was insightful and something worth remembering fondly._

_Please know that while what I’m about to say may seem harsh, I still love you and care for you, and will continue to until God himself makes me stop (should He think He has that power). There’s not going to be a night going forward when I don’t think about you or what we had together. Let it be known that I would still walk the ends of the Earth for you._

_I don’t want to keep you tethered to me while I sit around over here, pretending like I know what I’m doing. I don’t know how long I’ll wind up staying, and it’s unfair to leave you like some miserable widow, never to see her lover return from war._

_You’re young and despite your health complications, you are lucky you aren’t here. You can be there for someone, and they won’t grow heart-sick over not seeing you._

_I want you to be free to go out there and make your mark on the world without worrying about me. Consider me part of your life experience, but don’t use me as an excuse to hole yourself up in that house with your father in the middle of nowhere. Please let go of me and allow yourself to roam and do what men do._

_This will be my last letter to you, but maybe one day our paths will cross again._

_Remember what I said earlier, that I will always love you, and will look back on you fondly and always wish you well._

_Please take care of yourself._

_Love, Cas_

By the time Dean reaches Cas’s name, his eyes have blurred so much with tears, Dean can’t distinguish the letter from his hands.

All his resolve from a minute ago breaks into tiny pieces and evaporates in an instant.

He can’t burn these letters.

He can’t burn them.

He can’t burn the last of Cas’s words, his memory, or the part of Dean’s soul that he is permanently a part of.

Dean, all fight leaving his body, feels dizzy with exhaustion all catching up with him. He staggers to his feet, and heads over to the abandoned sack. In one fluid motion, he grabs the bottom of the burlap and flips it upside-down, the letters, fragments of letters, paper, and photos all cascading down onto the floor.

Dean watches and scans the pile with his eyes until he sees the photo of him face down on the bed. He stoops to pick it up, feeling some warmth coming back to his body, walks over back to his bed, and collapses into it already half asleep.

It’s then, and only then, that Dean realizes that despite all of what happened in a short amount of time—his heart is steady and calm.

**January 22nd, 1944**

**Pomona, Kansas**

Dean was going crazy.

He hadn’t received a letter from Cas since Christmas, and even though he was warned by Cas that he wouldn’t see a letter until the end of January, early February—Dean still felt like he was going crazy.

What didn’t help was that his birthday was in two days.

What also didn’t help was that their anniversary, even though every year they didn’t make too much of a “to do” about it, was also that week.

Cas had apologized in his last letter, saying between increased training at the beginning of January and the slow holiday postal service, that he might miss Dean’s birthday. He wished it early, even went so far as to “sing” him Happy Birthday in the letter, but it didn’t soothe Dean nearly enough to last him the month.

Dean had sent nearly fifteen letters in three different mailings and still hadn’t heard back.

He told himself to be patient. Cas begged for his patience.

But come the Friday before Dean’s 25th birthday, he was practically pacing his room, jumpy, twitchy, and restless.

Their letters bounced back to a more happy tone once December rolled around, and Benny had by then quit his diatribe on Cas and how Dean was “making it difficult for himself,” but it didn’t matter.

The damage was done.

In an act of defiance to Benny for even suggesting Dean consider “other options,” Dean doubled down on his commitment to keep everything going. He wrote Cas about his day, some dirty stories that they liked so much, even some stupid drawings.

He didn’t get much in return, only apologies and explanations that “training” was keeping him, along with the holidays.

And Dean grew more and more anxious.

The worst of it was that the memory of their apartment in New York had already begun to fade, and every night Dean took out those photos to remember it. He ignored all the sexier ones, the ones that gave him a thrill in the fall, and went for the boring ones, the ones that captured more of the space. He had begun to forget what it smelled like, what it sounded like—

He had started to forget what it felt like to wake up next to someone, or have their arms around him, or to give the best damn blow job he could manage, or to have Cas in him and staying in him even after they were done.

Dean was panicking.

And John had begun to notice as well.

So Lee and Benny practically kidnapped him for a round of drinks Saturday to try and calm him down and to celebrate his birthday earlier.

Every fiber of his being told Dean not to go.

He loved his friends, they were the only friends he had, but he wanted to stay at home and wallow in his misery. It felt better. Both he and Cas knew that a moment like this would happen, it was inevitable, but Dean realized he didn’t prepare himself enough for it. And his friends didn’t understand it either.

Benny didn’t give a shit about relationships ever since that one girlfriend he had that one time moved off to Chicago and he stupidly refused to go with her.

Lee only ever wanted Dean, and Dean knew that. Lee liked men a whole lot more than Dean did, but didn’t know what to do with that knowledge other than join Benny’s side in telling Dean that basically, his and Cas’s relationship was done for. He didn’t know any better, Dean would tell himself, because he never knew what love was.

But they showed up at the farm around seven, strong-armed Dean into Benny’s truck, and drove him to Rudy’s.

And it was a mistake to let them, Dean already knew.

Rudy’s was pretty crowded, even for a Saturday, and even Lee, who worked that night, had to push people out of the way so Benny and Dean could sit at the counter.

“Two drinks and I’m gone,” Dean said as Lee shoved two beers in his and Benny’s direction.

Benny sighed and kicked Dean’s shin, “Try to have a good time—it’s your birthday.”

“It’s not my birthday.”

“It’s close enough to your birthday that it’s your damn birthday,” Benny argued, clinking his bottle against Dean’s stationary one. He drank, and Dean stayed still.

He was losing it.

He didn’t want to tell Benny that earlier, there had been the thought of honest-to-god stealing his father’s truck and taking it to an airport. Benny would give Dean that _look_ before settling down on his routine lecture on Dean giving it up, letting Cas know politely in a letter, and moving on.

Benny’s words were a constant beat in Dean’s subconscious, and he didn’t want to hear it.

He didn’t want to hear it.

They sat at the end of the bar counter where, if they were at Paradise, Dean and Cas would be sitting in their usual spot. Dean knew for a fact if he were there now, Joshua wouldn’t be telling him to give up on jack shit.

“You’re making him miserable—stop,” Lee said, coming over after serving some patrons and cracking open his own drink. Dean glanced up, expecting to see Lee staring at him, but he wasn’t. Instead, Lee kept his eye on a rowdy table on the other side of the room. Dean sighed and went back to staring at his bottle.

He hated it when Lee stared at him.

Before Dean left for New York, it was only just annoying—now it was painful.

Short of a few inches and a haircut, Lee could pass as almost a spitting image of Cas. They weren’t twins in appearance, but it was mostly in the eyes that Dean got caught up, and the intense stare that both men seemed to be annoyingly talented at.

“Did I say anything?” Benny argued, raising his hands in surrender. “I said nothing. I only said it was almost his birthday, ain’t that right Dean?”

Benny nudged Dean with his shoulder and Dean rolled his eyes, looking over at him.

“Don’t start.”

“I ain’t startin’ shit,” Benny argued, draining the rest of his bottle before Dean took one sip of his. Benny noticed. “I’m sure if you have a few of those you’d be right as rain and maybe listen to me and him.”

He pointed to Lee who was still watching the table, pointedly ignoring the two of them.

Sighing, Dean finally took a sip, hoping the sooner he finished his drink, the sooner he could go home.

Dean never saw his bed that night.

He never even made it back into Benny’s truck.

Where he wound up, slightly tipsy like the night he was four years ago, was in the bed of the inn portion of Rudy’s. It was larger than his own, but the mattress wasn’t as comfortable as his, or as comfortable as the one he left behind in New York.

It did its due diligence however as he was pressed into it by an unfamiliar, yet very badly needed weight of another person.

The room didn’t have much to it other than the basic amenities for any ol’ traveler that stopped by a roadhouse for a break. A bed, a table, a lamp, a well worn dresser, small bathroom, and curtains on the window, which were the most beneficial to Dean and Lee that night. The only free room was on the bottom floor where people outside, should they wander on that side of the building, would see Dean’s legs locked around Lee who rocked in and out of Dean at a ridiculously slow speed.

But Dean didn’t complain.

The light was low and Dean almost kept it on, only just to be able to catch the familiar eyes looking his way and ignore everything else. But, they both decided that the shadows the light threw off would give them away.

In the end, Dean didn’t want to see Lee anyway. He only wanted to feel.

The bedspread was scratchy, just like the one back at the farm and as scratchy as the one Cas complained about constantly. They didn’t hide under the covers. The room was cold and slightly drafty but Dean didn’t want the intimacy of covers, laying in bed after, trying to talk their way out of the situation they both knew they shouldn’t be in.

Lee wasn’t bad at it, and Dean suspected that he may have had some practice in Dean’s absence all those years. Maybe he was just waiting for this moment to happen. Probably.

Dean didn’t care all too much about appeasing Lee then and there. He almost went on his front so as not to see Lee at all, but didn’t want to hide from his decision. It was a mistake as soon as he said yes, but he wasn’t going to hide and make it worse.

He needed someone against him, to tell him that things were going to be okay, and needed that familiar gaze back on him in order to feel right again.

When Lee buried his face in Dean’s neck and began to quicken his pace, Dean finally closed his eyes.

The moans and choked off gasps, the sighs and the soft swears that were uttered next to his ear were all wrong. Wrong sound, wrong tone, wrong pitch. Everything was wrong.

But when Dean closed his eyes, no longer able to see Lee’s, he worked his brain hard to replace everything he felt and heard with the memory of Cas—with who this was supposed to be.

It was difficult, since everything was completely off balance, but Dean imagined himself back in their apartment, even his own when they first met; he imagined the stupid, dirty things that Cas would sometimes lapse into saying when he began to lose control; he imagined how well they fit together, no matter if Dean was on his front, back, side, or straddling Cas under him; he imagined that was Cas there with him now, in some dingy motel room as they were maybe making a cross country trip just because they could, because they were free to do whatever they wanted.

Lee annoyingly came before Dean did, and pulled out long before Cas would have. Dean winced, hissed, and put a hand on himself to try and get the job done before Lee touched him.

He managed just as Lee got his bearings back, managing the weakest orgasm he thinks he ever had in his life—but it was something.

They both laid on the bed, Dean still on his back with his head turned towards the window. He knew Lee was staring at him again.

“Was it good for you?” Dean asked, his voice rough and flat, already beginning to feel cold.

“Sure,” Lee answered, sounding sad and not sure at all. “What about you?”

Dean didn’t blink as the horror of what he did began to sink into his brain. The imagination that carried him this far now sprang a ghost of Cas up in front of him, in that room, face twisted in sadness and pain.

His heart began to quicken and he pressed a hand against his chest to try and steady his breathing.

“Sure.”

Lee left soon after without another word, and Dean scrubbed his skin raw with a towel and soap.

The letter from Cas came in a week later, each package containing just as many, if not more, letters than Dean had sent.

Each one contained apologies, love declarations, and Cas’s own sorry attempt at creative writing.

Each one sank the nail of guilt and shame deeper and deeper into Dean.

He kept what happened out of his letters until the end of May, finally unable to stand it anymore.

In each letter he sent he tried to keep his words carefully chosen, making sure not to miss a step. He felt dirty with every single one he wrote “love, D” at the end of, and he had to force himself not to write a confession and beg for forgiveness in every letter.

Part of Dean knew that he should have told Cas in the very next letter he sent, that he explained what happened and that it’s not an excuse but he just needed something, anything, because being cooped up in a farm house in the middle of nowhere was terrible, and even worse with a terrible person like his father.

But another part of Dean, the louder part, said to wait. The last thing Cas needed while over fighting a war was to know that Dean was unfaithful. That probably didn’t do well for a soldier’s spirits.

Dean remembered how in past letters, Cas described soldiers as cheating on their sweethearts back at home. Dean realized now that it wasn’t out of malice, but out of desperation.

There was the slight hope, the sick, twisted, demented hope that maybe Cas had done the same thing, and they could call it even-steven.

But Dean knew Cas wouldn’t. He was just that kind of a person who wouldn’t.

Dean, on the other hand, cemented his place in Hell, if he wasn’t already going there.

But by the end of May, Dean was starting to learn to deal with what he did, and was riding on the chance he could hold it in until he could confess to Cas face to face. He hadn’t seen Lee or Benny at all since January, forcing himself to ignore all of their attempts to contact, and pretending not to be home when they came calling. It pushed Dean further into his loneliness, but he didn’t want to even think about those two until he could sort himself out.

On May 3rd, in a packet of five letters, Cas sent one that completely broke Dean’s resolve.

Cas proposed.

_April 21st, 1944_

_Dear D,_

_It’s still cold, still miserable, but I’m feeling better, oddly._

_I don’t know if it’s the knowledge that spring is here, and even if I can’t feel it yet, I’m sure you can._

_There’s something in the air here. I told you how we were going to be taking the Germans on around this time, though I’m not allowed to discuss specifics, but I really do believe that this will help end the war faster than you or I hoped it would._

_It’s now been over a year since I’ve seen you or heard you or touched you—and it is driving me absolutely crazy some days. Most days._

_I know we’ve talked about what would happen once I got back, and I am coming back, but I think maybe we should adjust our strategy. I’m feeling inspired by my duties over here, and I think we can apply it to us._

_The short term, we know. I come back, we move back to New York, and everything is right as rain. But I also want to think about the long term._

_I’m going to be bold, and maybe it’s crass, maybe it’s really out of line to be doing this through a letter that will take days if not weeks to get to you, but I’m going to do it anyway._

_I would like to marry you, if you’ll have me._

_I apologize for not asking your father first (I hope that made you smile), but it’s really the only logical step I can see going forward. It won’t change much in our relationship since I don’t need a ring to show you how much I love you—but I think it would be something to think about._

_There’s the chance I’m misreading things, and that maybe we aren’t on this same page. That’s alright, and I’m not married to this idea (see what I did there), but I hope maybe when I get back I can convince you._

_I love you, I miss you, and I want whatever it is we’re doing here to be done with so I can get back to you as soon as possible._

_Love, Cas._

Dean read the letter three times before he processed what Cas wrote.

Almost on cue, the almost-dormant guilt and shame duo surged in Dean, creating a wave of nausea, and he ran downstairs to the bathroom just in time to catch it.

He was unfaithful, and the man that he was unfaithful towards wanted to marry him—clueless. That was it. That was the ballgame. That was the hard cheese. That was the fact that Dean couldn’t try to side step anymore.

He betrayed the one and only person who ever really loved him in his entire life, and it only took Dean until right at that moment, sitting over the toilet bowl, to fully understand what he did to screw it up. It took him a year to understand just how far he had fallen away, and another five months to process how stupid he was—

And it took Cas’s letter to kick Dean in the face and tell him to square up, and be honest. He couldn’t have Cas thinking that Dean was a saint while he was gone, he couldn’t have Cas banking on a future with someone he wasn’t sure he could trust anymore.

Dean’s hand shook as he wrote the letter once his stomach settled enough to sit at his desk.

He didn’t mean for the letter to get so long, but he described everything that happened, from his feelings, to Benny’s snide comments, to that night Dean allowed himself to be pulled into bed with someone who looked like Cas just enough to take the edge off—he spilled everything.

In the end, four pages went off to Cas with no other letters. Nothing else to soften the blow or to remind Cas that Dean had been feigning uncompromised love for months.

He sent the letter on May 5th.

Cas’s goodbye letter came an agonizing month and two days later.


	8. Chapter 8

**CHAPTER EIGHT**

**August 3rd, 1944**

Cas sits in the middle of the large drawing room upstairs at his family home, surrounded by letters.

Pages and pages of paper encircle Cas as he sits cross-legged on the carpet, picking through each and every hand written word. It comes after he had spent the previous day examining the photos he had left behind when he was shipped off to basic training.

He knew he didn’t imagine them.

It’s been a week since Cas arrived back home in Litchfield and everything still feels just as foreign as it did over in England. It’s familiar in the sense of an old memory, but it isn’t home. It still isn’t home.

The only good thing about returning there is it’s where all of his things from the apartment are.

When he had first gotten home, his brother sat him down and debriefed him on all the things that he knew that Cas couldn’t remember or couldn’t place.

The first was that he lived in New York City before he came left for training.

The second was that the apartment he shared was on Christopher Street in the West Village. Michael had gone there with his friends to move all of his stuff back to Connecticut.

The third was confirmation of the name that Cas remembered part of on the way home from England. There was no last name attached, but only that Michael knew that Cas had lived with someone named Dean.

And that sent everything back in motion.

Any small gaps that remained in Cas’s head were filled in over the course of a few days, and all Cas couldn’t remember was Dean’s last name, or the town in Kansas that he went back to. One of them began with a P, and the other began with a W.

When the letters arrived two days after Cas got home, he had hoped he’d saved an envelope—but all the letters were folded neatly in a shoebox with no envelope to be found, to help save space.

So he goes through the letters each and every day, pausing only to walk around the room and look at his and Dean’s old belongings.

One of Dean’s earlier letters mentioned the photos, and Cas at once was reminded of them, and where he put them.

He spent a long while examining them, particularly the ones that Dean highlighted in his letter—both of their favorite, of him face down against the pillow, looking at him from Cas’s angle at the time.

It’s one thing to see Dean in his dreams and remember time spent with him; it’s a whole other thing entirely to finally see him again.

But Cas knows he has to get to the real deal.

So he sits in the drawing room on his seventh day back home, and re-reads the letters.

The annoying thing is that Dean could never sign his name. Only ever a D. There is nowhere in the letters where Cas can discern a full name. There’s no P or W name anywhere he can find— but he’s still making his way through the letters, all annoyingly and stupidly out of order.

And on that day, he finds a clue. A first step:

_I also want you to know that it took up the last of my paper so this is all you’re getting this week. I have to somehow convince my dad to let me take the truck into Lawrence for supplies. Wish me luck.[…] Hoping you can keep it in your pants around your bunkmates, D_

Lawrence, Kansas was a start.

Four letters later in the pile of paper:

_My dad said he found me passed out in the loft and drove me to LMH. I didn’t remember the trip. But I’m alright now. They gave me some “fluids” (I hate that word) and I’m back at home relaxing in my room._

Cas leans over and scribbles on the notepad he brought home from the hospital, handwriting still shaky:

Dean

LMH

Lawrence

Rudy’s

He sighs, getting more and more impatient each and every day he can’t get out there and find Dean. He doesn’t know if Dean knows his status, or if he just stopped writing.

One of the first letters Cas had read was the four-page confession Dean had written about what happened in January. Cas had remembered it already, and reading it again stung, but it doesn’t matter to him anymore. None of it does. He knows it won’t matter to Dean anymore either.

Cas just has to find Dean and they can talk it out, they can talk everything out—

There are no other letters waiting in the mail for Cas following this May letter, and that set alarms blaring in Cas’s head. He can’t remember what he wrote in response to it—but he hopes it wasn’t anything harsh.

Does Dean even know if Cas is dead or alive?

Head spinning, Cas puts down the letter that reads “Lawrence” and picks up another just as Michael knocks on the doorframe.

Cas glances up in acknowledgement before going back over the letters.

“I’m going shooting—didn’t know if you wanted to come along,” Michael says, watching Cas.

Pausing, Cas takes in the offer while glancing around at all the writing. He sighs, realizing his eyes need a break, and his head has started to ache. Shooting doesn’t thrill him, and he’s done enough of that, but he wants some fresh air. His brother brought home new hunting rifles the previous day and was probably itching to try it out.

“Sure—yeah, that sounds alright.”

Michael nods, glances around the room with a frown, and leaves. Cas stands, brushing his hands off on his trousers and steps over the letters carefully so as not to disturb his work.

His brother was not happy when Cas asked to see the room where his things were, and a few days later, the memory of ‘why’ came back. There was a brief moment where Cas had wondered if he could see if Michael knew Dean’s last name or where he was from, but the moment left as quick as it came. The memory of the call came back to him, and Cas remembered the conversation ending in less than 30 seconds, if that. When Dean recalled the phone call with Michael, names weren’t exchanged, thinking it was Cas on the phone.

As Cas worked in the room in the days before, he’d hear Michael walking up and down the hallway every so often, like he was waiting for Cas to find the magic ticket and snatch it away from him.

It had only motivated Cas to work harder.

Downstairs in the mudroom, Michael unlocks the gun safe wordlessly and pulls two hunting rifles off the rack. He hands them to Cas who takes them, staring out the window at the green lawn. It was quiet here, he decides, it’s too quiet. It was unsettling.

Michael curses and Cas looks over and sees a new box of ammunition tumble out of the safe, littering bullets all over the shale. It was an older box of ammunition that was well worn and hardly had the structure of a box anymore. On the top was lettering that spelled--

Winchester.

The name was familiar to Cas and he pauses, frowning. He’s seen the ammunition in the past? Maybe that’s… no. This felt more important than that. Cas easily pushes aside the reminder that the town of Winchester was only several miles away. It wasn’t any of that. Faint bells ring in the back of his head, trying to draw his attention to--

For no reason, Cas moves his gaze from Michael picking up the shells. His vision lands on the guns in his hand, where he also sees an engraved brand:

Winchester.

_“Like the gun?”_

Cas can feel his eyes widen as the voice in his head repeats the question again. Like the gun.

“Are you alright?” Michael asks as he takes one of the guns from Cas, box of ammunition on the shelf next to them. While Michael loads the gun, Cas’s brain runs a mile a minute. He can almost see in front of him the missing puzzle pieces coming into place.

Dean Winchester. Lawrence—which wasn’t where he was from, but Cas knows it’s close enough if he has a name—Kansas.

“Are you alright?” Michael repeats, taking the other gun, “You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.”

Cas realizes his breath has become shallower, and his expression must be alarming. Inhaling deep, Cas musters up some strength and plasters on a smile he hopes comes across as sincere.

“Completely fine”

**August 12th, 1944**

**Pomona, Kansas**

The morning brings clouds, and Dean sets himself up on the roof outside the second-story windows.

He managed to get most of the downstairs painted. It all needs a second coat but he’s decided to work on the second story in the meantime. Keep himself busy.

Late August snuck up on him.

He isn’t a hundred percent, not yet if ever, but he no longer feels like jumping off the roof of the barn. The house is quiet, the land is quiet, and his mind is finally quiet. While it all feels big and empty, Dean doesn’t mind in the end. He was gifted a record player by Benny, which was a nice surprise, along with two records. It isn’t a fix to everything, but Dean is still grateful.

The struggle still remains, however, and Dean had wound up putting the letters in his mother’s hope chest, leaving it in Sam’s abandoned room. Out of sight, out of mind had been the idea, but sometimes Dean found himself staring into the room, wondering if he should pull everything out again.

The guilt remains in small fragments. Dean does’t know whether to honor Cas’s memory or move on, as his final letter said. Some mornings, Dean wants to throw open the trunk and haul everything back out; he wants to board a train and get to Salisbury and get their things; he wants to spend a day in his memories, reliving every minute spent together.

But the other part of Dean would then quietly say that it would only bring him more pain, and continuing this behavior would bring misery to everyone. Cas’s letter instructed him to ‘Do what men do,’ so he’d tried that for all of three weeks.

Elizabeth was nice; she had familiar dark hair and a demeanor Dean was used to. They’d gone to a coffee shop in Kansas City and then to a picture show.

They’d ended it a week later. She had cited “distance,” but Dean couldn’t tell if it was physical or emotional. He.’d found he didn’t miss her that much.

A week later, he’d met Cassandra. Her father was big in Kansas City for some business thing, [which Dean had found impressive given he was a black man. But they clearly had money, and Cassandra flourished with her tight curls and flouncy skirts. She was the same as Elizabeth, same as Cas—kind of bossy, but knowing what she wanted without any second doubts or hit to her confidence. He liked that. She liked him. They’d spent three nights together before she’d told him it was over, Dean hearing “distance” again. This time Dean had known it wasn’t physical.

He wasn’t ready to ‘do what men do.’

The night Cassie kicked him to the curb, Dean had traveled back to the house and pulled out the trunk, furious. He’d considered burning the letters and photos again. Every word, every photo in soft light, every “I love you” gone in ashes, floating up into the sky so maybe the spirit of Cas could finally take it all back.

Instead, Dean had sat on the floor, lamp nearby, reading each and every letter he could. He’d started from the beginning, reading half of their story from the past year. Dean had wondered what happened to the letters he sent. What had they done with Cas’s things? Were they sent to Michael back in Connecticut? How could Dean get them back?

Dean had gotten to his birthday letter. Three pages long, full of praise and admiration and respect for what they had. Cas highlighted the miracle of finding each other. It was arguably the best one in the entire group. The letter Dean sent in its wake wasn’t nearly as poetic, but he had hoped it did the job.

A tangle of contradicting emotions had begun building inside Dean and he had wound up putting the letters away before he ripped them to shreds. He’d then picked up the envelope of photos, the treasure his father never found. The photos had felt like fire in his hand, and Dean wondered if he even had a right to look at them anymore. He didn’t think he did, but his hands had refused to put them back.

For the first time in weeks, Dean had cycled through the couple dozen photographs, taking his time on each one. There had been a lazy rekindling of fire inside him, but it was mostly drowned out by sadness and guilt. They were supposed to be happy memories, but now they served as a reminder of everything he lost.

The next couple of weeks had passed without incident, and Dean had decided to fix up the house while he decided what he wanted to do and where to go. He’d briefly considered New York, but his stomach had clenched in on that idea, shouting “ _No!_ ” back at him. Thoughts had then turned to California, wondering if Sam had any room for him at that fancy college of his.

Dean takes the scraper and picks off the flaking paint under his window. The sun is beginning to break through the clouds as time goes on, and Dean knows he has maybe another hour or two before he has to get off the shingles. He’d be able to work in the shade however… or he can just take an afternoon nap and wait for the sun to begin to set.

He doesn’t have a timeline anymore.

The sun finally punches its way through the clouds, and Dean climbs back into his room before he’s burned.

It’s thankfully a dry heat, and Dean sheds his shirt, tossing it on the floor, and goes downstairs for some cool water. His footsteps seem to echo in the house. He had gotten rid of John’s chair, replacing it with a sofa. The books are gone, Dean wanting to fill the shelves with his own things. He’d also put picture frames back up, finding them stored in the downstairs closet.

The letters and photos with Cas stay in the trunk upstairs. It’s forever a presence in the house, but it would stay under lock and key. That part of him is in the past. He’ll find himself a girl, get married, pop out some kids—

Dean sighs as he places the needle on the record player. He puts it too far, and the needle lands on one of the last songs on the record, a slow tune from Benny Goodman. The song usually played at the end of their performances as a goodbye. A morose song for his apathetic mood.

He keeps it on while he wanders back over to the kitchen sink, grabbing a class from the cabinet.

There, he sees the dust cloud out through the window.

It’s far off in the distance, and Dean squints, frowning. He doesn’t think there’s a wind storm coming—the clouds broke but not from the wind. There’s hardly a breeze outside. Does he need to cover the garden—

A moment later he realizes the cloud was made by a car heading his way. Smithy, Dean thinks as he fills the glass. He hasn’t received the paper yet today. It’s one part of the routine he’s kept from his father. While the news rarely seems good, and the war trudges on, Dean still needs to read it. Otherwise, isolation would swallow him whole.

Walking to the door, Dean downs his glass in one go and sets it on the table. Out on the porch, he stands in the shade, waiting for the lumbering truck to make its way there.

But as the vehicle approaches, Dean realizes it’s not Smithy’s truck. It glints in the sun, through the dust, and the engine doesn’t sound like it’s nearly dead. The thing is almost gliding across the dirt road towards the house, a newer-type car that purrs in the late-morning stillness. Dean’s confusion grows.

He moves towards the steps as the car approaches. It probably started the trip clean, but the dust of Kansas roads has built up a layer of beige on it. The sun shines off the windshield and Dean can’t see through it.

Eventually, the car pulls up into the gravel beside the barn and into the space between the barn and house. The dust cloud continues to move as whoever is behind the car puts it in park. One foot is on the step, and Dean holds a hand up over his eyes to block out the sun as much as he can.

The door opens.

“Can I help you?” Dean asks the figure beginning to step out of the car. He doesn’t move closer. The fear starts to build in him as he takes in the car’s appearance. It’s probably a banker, or some type of bill collector. His father probably had debt he never mentioned, and now Dean is—

Every thought stops cold in its tracks as the dust clears.

An imprint—a ghost—stands beside the car. He’s dressed in casual slacks and a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The man is a little paler, a little skinnier than the last time Dean laid eyes on him and his hair is a little messy—probably due to driving with the windows down—but he is very much there.

Dean’s brain completely stops working.

The sound of the car door slamming shut puts him in motion, his legs moving automatically. He doesn’t run. If he ran, the ghost would be scared off.

 _I have heat stroke_ , Dean thinks as he approaches. _This isn’t real, this isn’t real, is this real? This isn’t real_ —

The ghost doesn’t disappear. He looks more real the closer Dean gets. More details are apparent now:

The shirt is slightly unbuttoned at the neck; a new look. The pants aren’t black but a deep, dark brown and almost perfectly tailored to fit. His face doesn’t look as gaunt up close, but he’s still too pale. He needs sun—

Dean reaches out with a trembling hand, not even trying to stop it. He expects it to push through, to hit only air—

Cas captures it and laces his fingers with Dean’s, and Dean almost collapses with the touch. Everything, _everything_ , that he’s been holding in/back since Cas left a year ago comes rushing back like someone has kicked the dam open. At the same time, it’s both like the weight of the world lifts from his shoulders while an overwhelming force presses onto his chest. I’s a touch that Dean was starved from for way too long, a touch he had finally accepted he would never feel again and that he didn’t appreciate enough the last time he had it.

It’s a touch that brings Dean screaming back to the present moment, realizing with full clarity that the person in front of him is very much real, full of warmth, not a ghost whatsoever—

“Hello Dean,” Cas says, voice quiet and steady.

The words, the voice, the tone hit Dean all at once, _this isn’t a dream,_ and a rush of fire billows throughout him.

A strangled cry, one he had been holding in, building up, for over a year, escapes Dean as Cas pulls him into a warm embrace, tight and comforting. Dean wants to close his eyes and savor it, but is afraid if he does, he’ll wake up in his room, in his bed, in the middle of the night. If that happened, then the person in his arms wouldn’t be real, but a soggy, rotting monster from the—

“How?” was all Dean could get himself to ask, his voice sounding distant in his head. All of his focus had moved to the person he was holding, who held him. They are pressed together so tight, Dean could feel Cas’s breathing and heartbeat.

Cas shifts slightly so his neck presses against Dean’s neck, a wonderfully familiar gesture, “It’s a long story.”

Dean sniffs and finally closes his eyes, the tears building up finally pushed down his face. It was strange now to cry with happiness. “I have an empty house, empty kitchen, and an empty bed,” Dean whispers, “Come tell it to me.”


	9. Epilogue

**EPILOGUE**

**August 14, 1945**

**Christopher Street, Greenwich Village**

The sounds of celebration can be heard through their bedroom window, opened to catch the rare August breeze.

The decision to not join the rest of the city in their joy of the war ending was made without any debate by either of them. They don’t care anymore. There was no reason for them to care anymore. As soon as Cas stepped out of that car a year ago and back into Dean’s life, neither of them cared about much.

There was a point in the months after their reunion, as they prepared to move back to New York, Dean wondered if it would be possible to forget the entire year they were apart; forget the year that caused them both so much stress and heart ache.

It was more difficult than Dean wanted it to be to pick up where they left off.

There was no desire from Dean to look back on the previous year with any type of fondness. Even with Cas back sleeping next to him, Dean would still wake from that nightmare of the beach at night.

Dean wasn’t the only one who suffered.

There were times as the weeks went on where he’d be woken by Cas squirming or making unintelligible noises in his sleep. A pained expression often accompanied these nightmares, and Cas became quiet and stony afterward.

A month of suffering and keeping the worst of the worst at arms length from each other led them to finally talking about their experiences.

Slowly.

With Cas it was harder--he didn’t remember a lot of it with most of the memories of Normandy and immediately after popping back up in his dreams. Dates, names, locations mostly failed him. But he detailed the images he saw. It was worse than the nightmare Dean had.

They only gave each other small details at first. Never the whole picture.

But finally, one morning in late-October of last year, it all unraveled.

Dean was making their meger breakfast and Cas was parked at the table with his cooling mug of coffee.

“You haven’t told me about Lee yet,” Cas had said suddenly over the sizzling sound of eggs, keeping his voice low.

Dean almost dropped the spatula onto the stove when he heard that name out Cas’s mouth. He turned with a hard swallow and Cas was staring right at him, but not unkindly. Cas looked more like a man waiting for the train on a peaceful Sunday morning rather than a man waiting to hear why Dean broke a promise in the worst way.

There was no getting away from it. _But you don’t want to get away from it,_ his mind supplied as he turned the stove off and moved the pan, _you’ve been wanting to talk about this since it happened._ Dean didn’t get a free pass just because they were trying to preserve their relationship’s past. The only way to move forward and shed the unpleasant aftertaste of that time was to really talk about it.

So they did.

Dean told the whole story, with a few pauses, scared to say what happened next. Cas didn’t prompt him for any of it; the story tumbled out of Dean’s head and mouth like a waterfall. That story turned into his father’s death, then turned into the nightmare in great detail he had, the thoughts of jumping off the barn when things got a little too dark and Dean couldn’t see any brightness in his future. He talked of the letters that he almost burned, he talked about the guilt he carried after that night with Lee and not telling Cas--

Dean said it all.

That prompted Cas to say it all:

The stress and tension at his camp, the men who didn’t like him very much because the girls in town _did_. The loneliness that had his body aching and his fingers and toes tingling like he had the flu rather than heartache. The lack of concentration, the people shouting in his face, and everyone celebrating every time a letter came in from their sweetheart back home. Cas couldn’t rejoice, instead saying the letters were from his mother--nothing to get excited about. Cas detailed the repression he felt, unable to think of Dean for most of the day in case there was a slip up, unable to do anything about the kind of state Dean’s letters got him in; wishing he had the photos--

“That was the worst of it I think,” Cas said, staring at his now cold coffee. “I was starting to forget what you looked like.”

Cas wasn’t there when it happened, but he said how the one guy who he felt he could talk to, Garth, was shot and killed not even a week into them being in England.

After those memories, everything became muddled for Cas, and their talk at the kitchen table had come to an end.

But it felt as if someone threw open the windows in their relationship to let the fresh air in.

This was part of their history now.

Now, instead of pouring into Times Square with the rest of the population as the Japanese surrender, Dean and Cas stay in bed.

In the coming month, Cas will be going back to school to finish his medical degree, and he’s decided he wants to prepare, trying to restart his memory of the things he learned and may have forgotten about in the time he was gone. Dean already has a job. He had asked Joshua when they got back if there was any opening. Dean started with the dishes, and wound up behind the bar. It was only a Thursday to Sunday shift, but that was alright. It was steady money.

Lounging around in bed was a treasure; it’s where they most feel at home, even inside their own apartment. It’s their island of stability, and with Cas starting school up again soon, their bedroom would become more of a safe bubble than ever.

That day, Cas lies on the bed on his front with a book open in front of him. Dean rests next to him on his back, slipping in and out of sleep. Their clothes and bedspread were pushed to the ground hours ago, abandoned for the day. The warm breeze doesn’t stifle them, but brushes over their equally warmed skin. It’s a nice enough day with a strong sun and cool breeze, but the summer air doesn’t entice them out of their apartment. They’re content where they are.

The book only keeps Cas’s attention for a few minutes at a time, choosing instead to distract himself with Dean’s mouth.

“You’re going to fail if you keep doing this,” Dean says after Cas pulls away again. His visits are growing longer and longer. School was not on Cas’s mind anymore.

“There are worse things,” Cas says, fully closing the book now and shifting closer.

A breeze ruffles the gauzy curtains next to the bed and goosebumps erupted over Dean’s skin. Cas broke away and sat up, and an involuntary noise of disappointment came out of Dean.

Cas reaches over to the bedside table instead and grabs the familiar camera. Dean keeps his eyes trained on Cas as they position themselves to make their new memories. They add their own noise to the roar coming from several blocks away from the crowd in Times Square, but enjoyed their own celebration instead.

It sounded like home, it looked like home--

It felt like home.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! Thank you for reading this Pinefest! I'm very proud of it and it's one of my favorite things I've done (and the hardest thing I've done).  
> Thank you to BeesAreAwesome (AO3) for this BEAUTIFUL artwork I can even describe how far my jaw dropped when I saw it   
> I want to thank @cuddlemonsterdean and @malallory on Tumblr for being AMAZING, AMAZING beta readers. They were so helpful and I really owe a lot to them! A big thank you to them both!
> 
> I wanted to do a WW2-AU but from the other end, people who were stuck back home while their loved ones were overseas. And what's worse, those who were in LGBT relationships already in secret, and they couldn't really voice their concerns or love for their partner around other people. 
> 
> Thank you all so, so, so much for reading <3 You fill my heart with joy! 
> 
> Jen / wigglebox


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